


the world is too much with us

by tinybluepixel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Canon-Typical spiders, Found Family, M/M, Not-Quite Fix-It, Slow Burn, Time Travel, more tags to be added as this goes on, sue me, yes it's time travel fix-it-fic #69420
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 53,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28639452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinybluepixel/pseuds/tinybluepixel
Summary: The blood rushes through his ears and drowns out all other noise as he goes still. Intentionally, he reaches deep within himself, down to the very essence of what makes him the person he is, and twists it, knows it. It hurts; of course it does. But in the end, he opens his eyes again and he knows that he has to go on.In this moment, the Archivist forces himself to become Jonathan Sims once more.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 262
Kudos: 418





	1. we lay waste our powers

**Author's Note:**

> okay, here goes: 
> 
> I have TMA brainrot. I assume so do you, otherwise you wouldn't have clicked on this time-travel-fix-it-fic number 10,578. 
> 
> A little word of warning before I start losing my mind completely: This was started writing before the Season 5 premiere, and has slightly changed as we got more information. However, I have decided to get this out now before Mr. Jonny releases his final ten episodes (that will probably be specifically designed to destroy me completely) and I have to re-write this whole thing, so reader beware: If you come read this after the finale, a lot of stuff probably won't add up anymore. I kept the beginning intentionally vague, but since I have literally no clue what is gonna happen, it might not make any sense.  
> I don't really care. I needed to get this out of my system. 
> 
> Anyway, I sincerely hope you enjoy this! I've certainly enjoyed writing it, even though I'm a bit rusty (hah), especially when it comes to longfic. And this will be quite long. I've written about 1/5 so far, and it's already sitting at over 30k words, so, uuuhh ... yeah.
> 
> One last thing: Obligatory I'm-not-a-native-English-speaker, but I have lived in Am*rica a while, and I have no clue about British English. Ok. That's it. Enjoy.

It starts the same way it always does: A door, slowly creaking open. 

He stumbles out into the alley, his hair in knots and tangles, his jacket dirty, his jeans torn at the knees. He reeks of sweat. The door closes behind him with a deafening slam.

Overhead, the moon looks down on him like it’s a disappointed spotlight, judging his every move as he pulls himself up the filthy brick wall of the alley he landed in. The sky is an unforgiving and blissfully empty black, with only a few twinkling stars visible at all. A gust of wind, bone-chilling and merciless, sweeps through the alley in an assault of freezing cold. 

When he finally manages to steady himself, back pressed to the wall, he takes a deep breath, and it feels like a rebirth. 

Above, a window lights up and he hears voices. Two women, arguing, about something or everything or nothing. He looks up, not quite listening in, but completely transfixed by the intimacy, the anger, the feelings in their agitated voices. The light goes out again as they leave the room and he looks to the ground. 

There, on the bare, snow-slick concrete, between his feet, a ring of keys lies glistening and silver. He stares at it for a while before slowly reaching down to grab it. It’s cool to the touch, almost freezing. On it, multiple small keys jangle against each other, looking almost identical. An onslaught of memories, like flashes in his mind: A coffin, a chain, a padlock, a different key frozen in ice. 

He slowly traces one with his thumb before putting it in the only pocket he has that doesn’t have a hole in it. This one he cannot afford to lose.

The noise of a car driving by startles him out of his trance. The exhaustion is threatening to settle in; he can feel it beginning to weigh down his shoulders and legs. 

He looks up. The door is gone. It has never been there. 

Gathering all his strength, he pushes himself off the wall, fingernails scraping across the bricks, and takes the first few steps towards this new reality. He knows he has an apartment out there somewhere where he can shower, where clothes in his size and style hang unclaimed in the closet, where the food he used to like lies in the pantry just waiting to be cooked, where a bed waits for a warm body to sleep in it. He knows that the version of him who left this apartment this morning doesn’t quite exist anymore. This is his reality now; it is his to shape. 

He will do better this time.

Walking is difficult. His feet hurt with every step he takes as if someone is slowly pushing nails into his heels. The people he passes on the street purposefully avert their eyes as they walk past him, and he cannot fault them for that: He knows he smells bad and looks worse. He doesn’t have any money to buy a ticket for the Underground with, and his apartment is further away than he remembers. 

When he finally reaches it, he carefully extracts the keyring from his jacket pocket, then fiddles with the keys until he knows which one will open this particular door. It slides in without protest and he turns it with no particular effort. The door clicks open. It feels like a beginning.

Once inside, the clock hung on the wall above the fridge proclaims it to be 5am in an almost accusing way. He gives it a look. Nothing changes, of course it doesn’t. With more care than he gave his own body, he puts the keyring in the bowl by the door that used to hold a different set of keys altogether. He rips the jacket off first, discarding it on the floor next to the couch that he inherited from his grandmother. The shirt he tosses directly into the trash can in the kitchen; it is far too torn and dirt-caked to ever be worn again. The jeans he thinks he can wash and maybe donate, as the rips at the knees almost look intentional, so it goes on the same pile as the jacket. Carefully, he toes off his shoes and notes that his socks are soaked through with blood. He puts both shoes and socks into the trash can. 

The shower is a revelation. The hot water hits his shoulders and he practically  _ melts  _ at the sensation of it. He rubs soap onto his skin and watches as the blood and dirt of a world now gone disappear down his shower drain. 

He turns off the water, towels himself off, and pads out of the bathroom towards the closet. 

The memories are faint, but they are there. He knows where the pyjamas are, and he takes one out that he fondly remembers being his favorite. Socks he finds in the bottom drawer and he picks out thick black ones that he once banished down there because they were too warm. Before he puts them on, he very carefully cleans and bandages the wounds at his feet with supplies taken from the dusty medicine closet in the hallway. 

Then he sits down on the bed and breathes. Doubt creeps into his consciousness with dark, long fingers curling over his heart, and his breaths turn shaky. 

Outside, the sun just begins to crawl over the horizon. A bird sings. The sound of cars rushing past. The smell of the city. The heartbeat of a world. He can feel it. He knows it. 

He stops. 

The blood rushes through his ears and drowns out all other noise as he goes still. Intentionally, he reaches deep within himself, down to the very essence of what makes him the person he is, and twists it, knows it. It hurts; of course it does. But in the end, he opens his eyes again and he knows that he has to go on. 

In this moment, the Archivist forces himself to become Jonathan Sims once more. 

Jon doesn’t remember falling asleep. The bed is devastatingly soft, and he must have gotten under the blanket at one point, but he can’t remember actually making the decision to go to sleep. No dreams, though, for once. That’s nice.

Daylight floods the room. Jon gets up, winces when he puts his injured feet on the worn carpet, and moves towards the kitchen. The clock above the fridge tells him it’s 2pm. He knew that before he looked, just as he knows the date and year before he checks the calendar that hangs next to the door. It’s the first day of January, 2014. 

“Happy New Year,” he says to himself. His voice sounds too loud to his own ears.

Jon picks out a sensible dress shirt and vest combo from his closet, but pairs that with some dark jeans he cannot for the life of him remember buying. There’s some dirty laundry in the laundry basket, so he takes his jacket and jeans from where he discarded them next to the sofa and stuffs them into the washing machine with the rest of the stuff from the basket. 

It’s these ordinary things that break him. He hasn’t been Jonathan in a long time. 

So he picks himself up from where he collapsed crying next to the washing machine and pushes a couple of buttons to get it running. He washes his face. He charges his phone. He puts on shoes. He picks up the keys from their little bowl. He puts on a jacket. He locks the door behind him.

It’s a beautiful day. Normally, London is a cesspool of rain and dirt, especially in winter, but today the sun shines down on the dirty streets and the air is crystal clear and cold. Jon doesn’t even mind the mix of snow and mud and water that covers the roads and sidewalks, even though it’s mixed in with the leftovers of the New Year’s fireworks. Briefly, he stops to consider when he walks past a hair salon. He arrived through the door, and whatever version of him existed in this reality until that point got replaced by him, but he wasn’t in his normal body. His scars have disappeared, his ribs replaced, his hair is cut short in a way that it hadn’t been since … since the time he was a man wanted for a murder he didn’t commit. He runs a hand unmarked by fire through it now, and wonders where his long hair went. He brought the dirt and grime from the apocalypse with him, and his feet are severely blistered and damaged, but his supernatural wounds have disappeared. That makes sense, he thinks, as they haven’t technically happened in this timeline yet, but then why is his hair short? To make him fit in better? It was long when he walked through the door and short when he came out of it. It is almost funny, and it definitely does make his head hurt thinking about it. 

In the end, he walks past the hair salon without finding a solution. He has better things to do. 

First, he buys flowers. A sensible premade bouquet, with yellow and orange flowers and a lot of baby’s breath. The woman who sells it to him winks and asks if it’s for a lady friend. He gives her a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and says yes. 

Second, he rips a piece of paper from his notebook and scribbles a short message onto it in pencil. He then leaves it in the mailbox of one Gerard Keay. Perhaps there is still time for him to be saved. 

Georgie’s apartment is on the outskirts of town, so he buys a bus ticket and spends the ride peoplewatching. He himself gets quite a few amused looks probably due to the flowers he carries carefully in the crook of his left arm. When he arrives at her apartment, he can see the Admiral sitting in the window, fur as fluffy and luxurious as ever, looking out, and meowing loudly when he spots Jon.

The doorbell is very intimidating, and even though Jon had planned out what to say and do, he still finds himself hesitating. But cowardice hasn’t done him any good so far, and he knows an apology to Georgie will greatly smooth things over in the future. Also, it’s just the right thing to do. It’s not the first time he looked back on his life and is surprised at just how much of an asshole he was. So he rings the doorbell, and positions the flowers so that she’ll see them, and takes a deep breath to calm his racing heart. 

Georgie opens the door, her hair up in a giant bun on her head, wearing pyjama bottoms, and a look of surprise on her face. 

“Jon?” she asks, and he smiles. 

“Hi, Georgie,” he says, “I came to apologize.” 

She lets him in.

Later, he’s sitting on his couch, eating one of the homemade chocolate chip cookies Georgie made him take home with him, and plots what else to do. He looked into his calendar and it says that he has to be back to work tomorrow, which is alright with him as he really is quite desperate for a statement, but he doesn’t know how to approach the whole situation. He’s still technically a researcher, not an Archive employee, which will make getting a statement a little harder. And then, of course, there’s the question of Gertrude. 

Jon’s not sure whether he wants to talk to her, tell her everything, and get her help, or if he wants to avoid meeting her at all. He’s scared that if he tells her his story, it will alter events in a way that will make it harder for him to do what he has to do. What would happen if she avoids her death and he never becomes Head Archivist? What if she kills him outright? So many times in his past life had he wanted to turn back time and talk things through with her. Now he knows so much and he’s seen more than she ever will, he’s not sure he needs her anymore. However, that longing to talk to her is still there, but so is the fear and apprehension. Still, he has more than a year of time left before her death, so he leaves the decision for another day and tries to figure out what to do about his job as a researcher. It’s not like he doesn’t remember what this work entailed, but rather that he has absolutely no interest in pretending not to know anything about the things he now has such deep understanding of. And then there’s the fear. Of course there is fear. There is always … fear. 

This specific fear that he feels right now has three names: Sasha, Tim, and Martin. He is certain he will Know who Sasha is when he talks to her again, but right now, for all his powers of Knowing, he still cannot recall her real face. He remembers her voice from the tape recordings he found in Not-Sasha’s desk, but these tiny snippets of a person he once called friend and yet does not recall at all, they unsettle him. After all, Jon is no longer used to not knowing something. 

Tim is another thing. He misses him, terribly, and he’s so, so, so sorry about everything. But it’s not like he can apologize to Tim for something that hasn’t happened to him yet, at least not in this timeline. Maybe Jon can do it right this time. He desperately wants to make it right. 

And then … Martin. The ache in his chest is omnipresent and all-consuming. It feels like a part of him is missing, like someone, something, ripped out his soul and tore it apart into tiny pieces. Jon feels the loss of Martin with every single breath, every time he blinks, every time his heart beats. This emptiness, this numbness, this hurt, it follows him everywhere. Ignoring it does nothing. He’s sure that when he sees Martin again, a Martin who is not  _ his _ Martin, he will not be able to restrain himself, that all these feelings will come crashing down on him at once. Maybe it will consume him. Maybe he should let it. 

Right now, Martin works in the Library, and Sasha and Tim work in Research with him. He will have to be cautious not to reveal too much to them. Maybe he can even keep them from being trapped in the Archives, but he’s not optimistic. 

Of course, the biggest obstacle of all is Elias. Jonah. 

Jon is almost sure that Elias knows by now that  _ something _ has replaced the rude researcher Elias has earmarked for becoming his little science experiment. Maybe he even knows that there is now a true Archivist in this world, albeit one who is currently cut off from his Archive. Jon is sure that in his current state, he is not nearly powerful enough to be able to confront Elias. He’s afraid of being caught up in Elias’ web of lies and manipulation again. Most of all, he doesn’t think he will have the patience of not attacking him outright. There’s nothing that Jon wants more than Jonah Magnus dead.

But that will have to wait. 

It’s Thursday when he returns to work. The Institute looks the same it always has, a small, unassuming building with some very sensible flower beds in front of it. The door is just as heavy as ever. Jon doesn’t know why exactly he expected it to be different and is surprised when it’s not; he knows that he just went back in time and not into a different dimension where doors suddenly open easier. After greeting Rosie, who looks so much younger and happier that it startles him a bit, Jon has to physically stop himself from walking down the stairs to the right, leading to the Archives, and force himself to walk up the stairs to his left, leading to the Research Division. 

There it is, untouched: his desk. It even has the little picture of the Admiral on it that he framed just to have something on this desk. There the small vase he got from his grandmother and repurposed into a pen holder, a stack of yellow post-it notes, and a small box of blue paper clips. The desk is next to a window and opposite of Tim’s desk. Tim himself seems to be late, or maybe Jon is just early, and he’s grateful that he can postpone this confrontation for at least a few minutes more. The other desks are in the process of being populated by their respective occupants, with some putting mugs down, others shuffling papers around, and one poor soul even has put their head down and seems to be asleep; Jon Knows that they spent New Years Eve at their brother’s apartment, partying just a bit too hard.

Jon sets his messenger bag down by the desk, puts the little takeaway cup of tea that doesn’t taste right onto the desk, sits himself down in the chair he forgot was so terribly uncomfortable, and opens the case file on top of his towering stack of to-be-researched files. Immediately upon reading the first sentence, he remembers this particular case. A haunting of … evil spiders, for lack of a better term. Jon has to suppress a shudder, even though he Knows that this statement is absolute bogus, but since he has no way of communicating just  _ how _ he knows this, he is going to have to “research” this one anyway. Of course, he remembers what he did, last time: he went to check out the apartment, found a harvestman spider in one of the corners, squashed it with great difficulty (and his shoe), then marked the statement off as discredited. Part of him is glad that at least with this particular statement, his desire to mark every case as made-up hadn’t caused any harm back in the old timeline, but with that knowledge comes one that his act of scepticism had, in fact, caused suffering for many people. Well, at least he now had a chance to make it up to them, and the determination to match. 

The door to Research is thrown open with a flourish and a shock of colors assaults Jon’s eyes: It’s Tim, wearing a shirt with a print that wouldn’t have looked out of place as a bus seat cover or a movie theater carpet, combined with a cardigan in marker-pen-green. But it’s Tim. It’s Tim, and he has a smile on his face that is bigger than any Jon has seen in years, and it reaches his eyes and it’s genuine, not the evil sarcastic grin that Tim had sported in the months and weeks before the Unknowing. Jon drops his pen and has to swallow down tears.

“Gooooood Morning, friends!” Tim announces, which gets him a few startled grunts and a couple of half-hearted good mornings from his colleagues. He pulls his chair back with purpose, causing a metallic screech that has the rest of them cursing and yelling, and he just laughs. 

Jon looks down and pretends like this case file is the single most interesting thing he’s ever read.

Of course, he can’t escape Tim forever. The grace period he’s been given amounts to a total of six minutes and twenty-seven seconds (not that he’s been counting) until Tim pushes away a stack of paper that he apparently deems unimportant to make room on Jon’s desk for him to sit on. 

“Hello, Jonathan!” It’s achingly familiar, and he hates it. For the fraction of a second, he hates this Tim for not being his Tim, before he catches himself. It’s the same man. Just … earlier. Younger. 

“Good morning, Timothy,” he answers, putting down his pen. “How was your New Year’s Eve?” The moment he asked, he knows: Tim spent his New Year’s Eve getting drunk at a club with some friends, then went home at two in the morning and spent the rest of the night drinking two entire bottles of wine all by himself while making a list of resolutions that he knows he won’t keep before passing out on the couch.

“It was ah-maze-ing!” Tim says, smiles fondly, and rearranges his legs so he’s sitting more comfortably on the edge of Jon’s desk, “I met some friends at a bar, kissed a beautiful girl named Christie at midnight, and took her home! You know …” He wiggles his eyebrows and Jon snorts. 

“Believe me,” he says “I know. I don’t want to hear any more.” He never really had considered Tim a liar, and to now be able to catch him in one was a bit startling. However, it is really none of his business what Tim does or doesn’t do in his free time, and of course he couldn’t exactly explain how he knew that it  _ was _ a lie. Instead, he gives Tim a small smile and goes back to his file. Tim pouts for a bit, tries to distract him by stealing a couple of paperclips, then begrudgingly does sit at his own desk to do some work. Jon remembers that Tim was actually really good at this, at researching. He remembers more: Tim’s hands flying through the air in wild gestures as he rambles on about Smirke and architecture and things, the way he drank his coffee black but with four spoons of sugar stirred into it, the sparkle he had in his eyes when Sasha laughed at one of his jokes. 

He sighs. He needs to do the effort this time around.

“Hey Tim,” he says in a half-whisper, loud enough to get Tim’s attention and quiet enough as to not alert his other colleagues. Tim looks up with a smile developing on his face and raises an eyebrow.

“What?” he asks, amusement drenching his words in its vibrant colors. 

“I woke up in an alley on the other side of town, and I have absolutely no idea how I got there,” Jon says, not lying, but also not telling the truth. Tim’s imagination fills in the gaps immediately, though, and his eyes light up. 

“No way! Jonathan Sims, blackout drunk? Who would have thought you had it in you!” Tim looks proud, a smug smile on his face. It’s almost too much for Jon’s heart to take. He almost cries. Almost. 

Of course, it’s too much to hope that he can avoid Gertrude. The bitter biting need for a statement is finally too much to bear, now that he’s so close to the Archives, and when all the other researches have finally left for the day and the building is blessedly empty, Jon takes a deep breath and gets up. He leaves the Research Department and walks down the stairs to the lobby, trying to be quiet but also to look casual, just in case someone spots him. He knows he’s not completely alone in the building yet, but most of the employees have left for the day, and the burning hunger in him makes him irrational. He actually wanted to avoid the Archives as long as possible for fear that he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself, to not claim the Archives as his when Gertrude was still in his way, but he can’t, he needs this, he wants this, he can’t think straight and he’s so, so hungry. 

The way to the Archives is so familiar, he could walk there in his sleep. When he arrives, the lights are on, and the door to his - the door to Gertrude’s office is closed, but there is a light shining through at the bottom, so he knows she’s probably in there, and he decides that it’s better if she doesn’t know he’s here. So it’s when he’s rifling through a box of statements to find one that’s new, and real, one that he hasn’t read yet and that will feed his god, is when he remembers that even though Gertrude Robinson never made the choice to become an Avatar, she was still Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, and that comes with certain powers. So when he looks up, he’s not surprised to find her towering over him with her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed tightly together. He is surprised at the gun pointed at his face, though. 

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my Archive?” she Asks. Every single syllable is enunciated precisely and deliberately, and there is more power behind them than he thought she would have at her disposal. 

He holds up his hands in a show of defeat, and in doing so drops the statement he just pulled out of the box. 

“My name is Jonathan Sims, and I’m the Archivist,” he says, compulsion pulling the words from his mouth. Damn. He never thought he could be compelled like this. Good to know.

“You …” Gertrude says. “How can you possibly be the Archivist?” She keeps the gun pointed at his face. It’s a mean looking thing, large and black and very, very dangerous.

“You Know I am,” Jon says, and looks Gertrude in the eyes. “I’m not lying to you.” 

She lowers the gun, just a touch, then motions for him to move into her office. 

“I imagine you have a statement for me, then?” she says. He doesn’t protest. For the first time in his unusual and twisted life, he is going to sit on the other side of the desk, and he is the one who will give a statement. He’s recorded himself plenty of times, but never like this. 

The tape recorder clicks on as soon as he sits down. 

“In your own time,” Gertrude says. She directs him to a chair, then pulls out a random box of stale biscuits from somewhere and puts them in front of him. She’s still clutching the gun.

“I … um ....” Jon stammers. She rolls her eyes and puts the gun into one of the desk drawers. 

“Better?” she asks.

“Quite,” he says. 

“Statement of Jonathan Sims, regarding his being the Archivist. Second of January, 2014. Gertrude Robinson recording.” Gertrude takes out a form and an expensive-looking, fire-red pen, and notes his name down on the form. 

“Right,” he starts, and then it comes pouring forth of his mouth and he has to restrain himself to keep some parts of it hidden and secret, the parts that he doesn’t want Gertrude to know about. 

“I … My name is Jonathan Sims. You know that. You know me. I am … was … an employee of the Magnus Institute. I worked in Research. It was … alright. The cases we got were mostly fake, but I didn’t know that at the time. 

“I’ve always been a workaholic. A weird child that grew into a weird adult. Never had many friends, never wanted them. I thought I was smarter and better then all of them. I was an arrogant asshole all my life. So when Elias Bouchard came down from his office to my desk in Research and told me he had cause to believe that Gertrude Robinson would not return to her post as Head Archivist and that he had chosen me to be her replacement, I was proud. I felt vindicated and honored and I was so … elated that Elias had chosen me over all the others that I never really thought about that I wasn’t at all qualified to be Head Archivist. I wasn’t too pleased about my assistants either - I knew Tim and I knew he was good at researching things, same with Sasha, but I had always thought Martin to be incompetent and useless and clumsy.

“So, everything went alright for a while. I tried to bring order into the chaos and I cursed your name many times. I read statements and found that some couldn’t record on my laptop, or my phone, or on any other electronic device, until I finally tried one of the old tape recorders I tucked away in a corner. I read about one of those statements per week, and after the second I was sure that there was more to them than the fact that they couldn’t be recorded properly. In my heart I knew they were true, but my mind rejected this. I was so attached to this persona of a sceptic that I made up for myself that for each and every statement I found some ridiculous explanation why it couldn’t be supernatural. But I knew I was lying to myself. I was afraid. 

“I won’t bore you with every single detail. We were attacked by the Corruption and lost Sasha to the Not-Them. I grew paranoid, Tim grew resentful, and Martin grew in my esteem. New people came, Daisy and Basira and Melanie, and slowly entangled themselves with the Archive, with me, until they too were caught down here. I made bad decisions. I encountered Jürgen Leitner, only for him to be killed by Elias. He never did actually blame the murder on me, you know? He actually defended me when the police thought I killed Leitner. It would have been so easy to just say that I did it. But I was his little experiment, his pet project. I came pre-marked, you know. When I was a child, the Web touched me. Then the Eye, of course, when I started working here. The rest, Elias arranged. And when I died, in an effort to continue your mission and stop the Unknowing, I was given a choice, and I made it. Did I choose wrong? Perhaps. But I was too much of a coward to die, and I still thought I was meant for something more, that I was the chosen one, somehow more special than everyone else.

“You know how the Watcher’s Crown works? An Archivist, marked by every single one of the Entities, forced to bring about the end of the world as we know it. Well, Jonah succeeded in performing it. One by one, he sent them all after me, he spun his little web of lies and caught me in it. Hm. It’s funny, actually. He would have been a great Avatar of the Web, I think. 

“I’m not like you, Gertrude. All I ever wanted is for everyone to make it out alive. The last thing I would ever have done is sacrifice my assistants like you did. But they died anyway, they all … died. Even before Jonah’s Apocalypse, I lost Sasha and Tim. I lost myself. I tried to hold on to my humanity, but it slipped through my fingers like fine silk … The only thing I had was my love for Martin. It was the only thing that kept me going. I wonder, Gertrude, have you ever loved someone so deeply? Of course you haven’t. I know that. Not Emma, not Agnes. Me, though: I knew him, and he knew me. We were two parts of a whole. So when it was over, and he was gone, and I was … gone … I actually don’t really know what happened. I remember … pushing. I broke down. I collapsed. I broke into a million pieces and then I pulled myself together again. I reached out and there was a set of keys. I took them, and there was a door. And as I opened it, all I could think about was how much I wished I could do it all over again, knowing what I now know, and how much I wanted to re-do everything and that if I was only given the chance, I could save them! I could make them survive! So I walked through the door, I’m not even sure if I had a body while I did it, if I was alive when I did it, and when I walked out, I was still me, but less, but more than I was at this time the last time I did it, if you get what I’m saying. Someone or something had turned back time and took me and spit me back into it. I don’t know how it worked, exactly. If the version of me that existed in this timeline so far just stopped existing, or if I overwrote him or something. I just know that I’m me, and I am the Archivist.

“And now I get to try again. I got my wish. I’m still the Archivist, but I don’t have an Archive. I need statements, but not as urgently as I did before I walked through that door. But there are things that haven’t changed. My love for Martin. My ache for the people I’ve lost. My hatred for Jonah Magnus. But this time, I’ll do it right.”

Gertrude is silent for a while. So is Jon. He sits, hands folded in his lap. 

Then, “Statement ends.” She turns the tape recorder off. She folds her arms. She looks down at her desk. She looks at the door. She looks at the wall. Finally, she looks at Jon.

“Time travel, then?” she asks.

“I guess so,” he says, shrugging hesitantly. 

“So,” Her eyes are so cold. How could anyone ever think she is just a harmless old lady? “I will die. Soon.” 

Jon gulps. He’d hoped to avoid this particular path of conversation, so he says: “Yes. But I won’t tell you more.” 

“Right, I suppose that makes sense. My death would be a very significant event, and you won’t want to disturb the timeline too much,” she says, and he looks at her, not even trying to hold back the surprise in his face. “I’m not stupid, Mr. Sims. And I understand. I Know.”

“Right,” he breathes. 

“Just one question,” Gertrude says, and these cold, cold eyes are burrowing into his soul and he has to suppress a shudder, “... Is it peaceful?” 

Gerry had appreciated his honesty. He thinks Gertrude might be quite the same.

“No,” he says, “Not at all.” She nods.

“Well, I suppose that’s all you should tell me. If you want some statements, feel free to take as many as you want. I’m going to make up some excuse for Elias, but I assume he already knows what you are. He will probably accost you in the upcoming days, I would think,” she says and gets up. She opens the door for him and ushers him out of her office with some urgency. 

“Probably,” Jon agrees, and then a thought comes to his mind, and he turns around to face Gertrude once more. “Could you, uh, tell Gerry to check the note in his mailbox and actually follow the instructions on it?” 

Getrude actually chuckles at that. 

“Trying to prevent another death, are we, Mr. Sims?” she asks, and he gives her an exhausted smile.

“As many as I can, Gertrude,” he says. “As many as I possibly can.”


	2. blackout poetry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of happenings around the Magnus Institute, London, as experienced by three of its employees, during the years 2014 and 2015.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: loss, arson, implied gun violence, Elias Bouchard
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read, left kudos, and even commented! You guys made me so happy <3  
> Just a quick note that the Tim and Sasha POVs in this chapter are a one-time-only deal, as the rest of the fic will be from Jon's and Martin's POV!

There is something off about Jon. 

Sasha isn’t a suspicious person, usually, but she also isn’t stupid. Far from it, actually. So when she greets Jon after their lunch break, his reaction puzzles her.

First, she says: “Hey, Jon.” Like she always does. Nothing special, here. 

Then, he says: “Hello, Sasha.” Also not concerning in the least. His tone is a bit more friendly than usual, but maybe not being as grouchy as he usually is is one of his New Year’s resolutions? But that’s when things get weird: He gets this confused look in his eyes, and he looks up at her like he’s absolutely bewildered that she is Sasha, looks into her eyes and tilts his head to the side a tiny bit, like he’s going to ask her a question. He actually opens his mouth, then closes it again, shakes his head, starts again - and then let’s it go.

Weird, she thinks. But then, that man has always been weird. Hell, sometimes it seems like being weird is a requirement to work at the Magnus Institute! So Sasha just smiles at him and launches into a rant about the case she is currently researching and how she has to work with the Archive to get some information on a related case and that Ms. Robinson is being difficult about it and how weird is it that she doesn’t have any assistants anymore? Jon just nods along, cups a mug of tea with his hands and doesn’t drink from it. He’s looking at the liquid inside the mug as if it can show him something, like some of these psychics who pretend they see the future in bowls of water or on the surface of a pond or something equally stupid.

“Anyway,” Sasha says, ripping apart a post-it note, “Now I gotta think of a different way to get that file so I can cross-reference properly. Who knew a house fire could be so complicated?” 

Jon looks away from his tea and into Sasha’s eyes. His gaze is piercing, searching, and she feels uncomfortably … seen. 

“I could get the file for you,” he says. “Shouldn’t be too hard to get Gertrude to give it to me.” 

Sasha raises an eyebrow. She’d thought the same, until she actually went down there to the Archives with the purpose of getting one single file from the sweet, brittle old lady who runs the place, only to find out that Gertrude was neither sweet nor brittle. She’d been cooperative enough, but once Sasha informed her about the case, she’d clamped up, refusing to give her access to the files, even though Sasha had threatened to go to Mr. Bouchard about it, which didn’t seem to scare Gertrude at all. 

“Sure, if you think she’s gonna let you live,” Sasha says. Jon looks back down at his tea cup, smiling softly to himself. “Everyone’s talking about how she’s so sweet and old, but honestly? She gives me the creeps.” Sasha suppresses a shudder. Jon actually barks out a laugh at that, surprising them both.

“Yeah,” he says, “She’s definitely something.” He looks Sasha in the eyes again, but this time it doesn’t give her that oppressive feeling of being seen. Instead, he just looks worried, and says with a grave voice: “I think being careful around her wouldn’t be too bad of an idea.” 

They go back to work after that. Sasha looks over, sometimes, to watch Jon. She still can’t shake the feeling that something’s off about him, from the way he holds himself to the way he talks. His tea remains untouched until he dumps it into the sink, only to make himself another cup, which he then too utterly ignores. He doesn’t spend long on his own case file before he walks out of the office and disappears for a good hour. When he comes back, he seems more awake, more alert, holding his head higher and a thin, worn-looking folder in his hands. He drops it onto Sasha’s desk with a smile, then goes back to his work. 

There’s curiosity there, and suspicion. Sasha watches as surly, antisocial Jonathan Sims buys Tim lunch just to do something nice, listens as he asks Jamie how her nephew is doing even though two weeks ago he said that he couldn’t care less about the private lives of his coworkers, and looks on as he waters the plant on Sandra’s desk while she’s on vacation despite him declaring about a month ago that office plants are a bad idea and that they only take up space that could be used for something else. Sasha isn’t stupid. She knows people can change; but a person changing this fast is not only improbable but, in their line of work, highly suspect. 

So what she does is this: She invites Tim out for lunch to corner him about Jon. Maybe he knows something? After all, Tim is the closest thing Jon had to a friend before his miraculous transformation, so if someone knows anything, it’s going to be him. But when they sit together at a small cafe, drinking coffee and eating cheap sandwiches, she tells him about Jon, and all the weird things she’s noticed, he dismisses her out of hand. But in his eyes, she can see worry. She sees how Tim looks over his shoulder every time she mentions Jon, as if he’s afraid that Jon will just appear behind him to watch what he’s doing, and she knows that Tim has noticed it, too. Afterwards, when they have finished their sandwiches, she feels bad for cornering him like that, so she insists on paying for the food, and they leave the cafe side by side. 

One time, in late February, Sasha walks down to the office kitchen to wash her mug, and quickly ducks into a supply closet when she sees Elias Bouchard marching down the hallway towards Research. The man has always given her the creeps, with his smile that’s slightly too wide and his eyes that are just a touch too blue; she doesn’t know exactly what disturbs her so much about them, but it’s hard to keep up eye contact with him. Hiding in a supply closet isn't the most elegant of solutions and she’s usually not one to avoid confrontation, but he gave her a stern talking to just a couple of days ago (“I’m not mad, Sasha, just … disappointed.”) and it’s way too early in the morning for her to deal with him right now, so she bites her tongue and swallows her pride and hides, clutching her mug. It’s a tight fit in the cramped space full of office supplies and spare desks and chairs, but there’s a small pane of glass set into the door that allows her to peek out into the hall to see if she successfully avoided Elias. And while the man does have an uncanny knack for knowing things he shouldn’t know, he seems to be focused on something else, so he doesn’t notice her. Unfortunately, that thing is Jonathan Sims, and Elias seems to have found him right in front of the closet Sasha is hiding in. 

“Jon. It’s nice to see you,” says Elias in a tone that suggests it’s actually the opposite. Sasha really doesn’t want to be Jon right now, not with the way that Elias is looking at him, but then she shifts slightly to the left to look at Jon, and is surprised to see an expression of pure, burning hatred in his face.

“Elias. Can’t say I feel the same,” Jon says, and his voice is so quiet Sasha has trouble hearing what he says. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.” Jon starts walking, but Elias’s arm shoots out in the blink of an eye and blocks his path. 

“Now,” Elias says, “Who are you, and what have you done to poor Jonathan?” 

Jon laughs, dry and unamused. “Don’t you know?” he says, and then laughs again when Elias just tilts his head in response. “I am the Archivist.” 

“And what exactly does that mean?” Elias asks. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Elias. Too bad I have no desire to talk to you.” 

They stare at each other, neither of them blinking for a solid minute or two, until Jon breaks the spell by violently pushing Elias’s arm aside and continuing down the hallway. Elias takes a deep breath, turns around, and makes to follow him, but before he does, he turns his head until he looks through the windowpane right into Sasha’s eyes. She flinches back, tries to hide behind the wooden part of the door, and when she finally dares to look out again, Elias Bouchard is gone. 

It’s the height of summer, Sasha taking refuge inside the fairly cool rooms of the Institute, when a young man with very badly dyed black hair that’s shaved on one side walks into Research with a stack of folders, which he unceremoniously dumps on Jon’s desk. The man turns to leave, but changes his mind just before he’s out the door. He looks around until his eyes land on Sasha, gestures towards Jon’s desk, and says: “Would you mind letting him know that we’ll be leaving tomorrow?” He has a nice voice, more quiet than she’d expected, some weird tattoos on his hands that kind of look like eyes, and his black nail-polish is severely chipped. 

“Sure, I’ll tell him,” she says and smiles at him. “He’s out researching a disappearance with Tim, but they should be back in an hour or so if you want to wait?” 

He shakes his head.

“Nah, that’s fine. Probably better if I don’t bother him. Just wanted to give him some of the statements, that’s all,” he says, gives her a little wave, then leaves. 

Almost exactly an hour later, Jon and Tim return, both quiet and looking like they haven’t slept in days. Jon stares suspiciously at the stack of folders on his desk.

“Some goth guy came in earlier and dropped those off for you,” Sasha says. “Long hair, shaved on one side, dyed black, and eye tattoos on his hands?” Jon's eyes light up in recognition. 

“Gerry,” he says, “He works with Gertrude. Did he say when they were leaving?” 

Sasha nods. “He did,” she says, “They’re apparently leaving tomorrow? He asked me to let you know.” 

Jon takes a deep breath and smiles.

“Thanks, Sasha,” he says, relief coloring his face, followed by gentle concern, “How did he look, if you don’t mind me asking? Did he look well? Or … sick?” 

“No, he looked just fine,” she said, “A bit tired, but that’s all.” 

“Good,” he says, “That’s … very good. I’m glad.” 

“He a friend of yours?” she asks, because nothing is better for office relations than some good old-fashioned gossip. Jon doesn’t answer for a while, and Sasha is about to ask again to make sure he’s heard her, when he finally says: “I … Yes. Yes, he is a friend.” That’s not really a juicy piece of gossip to share around, but the fact that Jon does have friends … It’s something. Sure, she’s not about to solve the mystery of Jonathan Sims today, but she’s inching closer and closer to breaking through and actually finding out what happened to him. Maybe, if this Gerry comes back, she can ask some subtle questions. 

For now, though, all she can do is watch as Jon transfers the folders from his desk to his messenger bag, which can’t be in compliance with data protection protocols, but who is she to judge? 

* * *

Martin from the Library is a nice guy, Tim thinks. Polite, humble, a bit shy, but charming. So it’s totally not fair that Jon avoids the guy like the plague. But then again, Martin is not as good at hiding his obvious crush on the man as he thinks he is, and maybe Jon has caught on? Still, basically fleeing in the opposite direction whenever he sees Martin is just plain rude, and Tim hates to see Martin visibly deflate if he notices Jon running away. So, when Tim has lunch with Martin on a Thursday in early September and Martin goes on and on about how Jon’s hair looks so pretty now that he’s growing it out and doesn’t Tim also think that it looks nice and compliments his face so well and how the grey streaks at his temples make him look so sophisticated and smart, Tim can’t hold it in anymore. 

“You know you could do better, right?” he says. Martin looks betrayed. 

“H-he’s nice, Tim, I swear! And he’s smart, and pretty, and …” he stammers, 

“And he’s being an absolute asshole when it comes to you. Or do I need to remind you of when he wouldn’t even answer your question about the Myers case? Or when he hid in a storage closet to avoid talking to you? Or when …”, Tim says, but Martin interrupts him.

“I get it, I get it. I could do better. I deserve someone who cherishes me and actually talks to me, I get it, Tim,” Martin says.

“Good! I’m glad you know! I feel bad now!” Tim says, and Martin just laughs at him. Tim ends up paying for their lunch to make up for what he said, even though he just wanted to help out. Seriously. 

Afterwards, when Tim is back in Research, and he sees Jon sit and read and chew on the end of a pencil in concentration, he takes his own chair, pulls it to Jon’s desk, and sits on it the wrong way around so that he faces Jon. Jon looks up, pencil still in his mouth. 

“What’s your deal with Martin?” Tim asks, keeping his voice cheerful on purpose. Jon drops the pencil and it clatters onto the desk. 

“What?” he chokes out.

“You heard me,” Tim says, scooting his chair even closer to Jon’s desk, “Martin Blackwood. Works in the library. Tall, reddish hair, freckles, glasses, likes to wear sweaters. What is your deal with him?” 

Tim had every intention of making Jon feel bad about his behavior and maybe even get him to apologize to Martin, but with the way Jon looks at him now, like a deer caught in the headlights, it’s him who feels bad. The man actually looks like he’s about to cry. 

“I’m …” Jon takes a deep breath and it seems like he’s going to start talking, but then he looks over to Judy’s desk, which is close to his and where three more colleagues have gathered around Judy, definitely not just to listen in on whatever personal stuff Jonathan Sims is going to share, so when he looks back to Tim and says: “Not here”, Tim just nods and follows him out of the room. 

They end up in an office that is currently not in use; there’s a little potted succulent on one of the two desks that looks like all moisture has been zapped from it, and considering even Tim hadn’t managed to kill the one succulent plant he owns so far, it must have been left unattended for a very long time. A thick layer of dust covers the furniture and he brushes some off the chair with his hand before sitting down and looking expectantly at Jon. 

“So?” he asks. 

Jon takes several deep breaths, then also sits down on the other chair. He doesn’t seem to care about getting dust onto his clothes.

“I ... “ he starts, then stops, takes yet another deep breath, then says: “I lost someone. It’s been a couple of months, but …” 

Shit. Now Tim really feels bad.

“Martin … he reminds me of him. … A lot.” Jon looks out of the window. Outside, it’s typical London weather: Rain, clouds. A world of grey. 

“Shit, I’m sorry, Jon …” Tim says, but Jon interrupts him with a smile. 

“No, no, it’s fine. I suppose I have been weird around him. You were trying to defend your friend. I appreciate that,” he says. “And it’s not your fault. There’s no way you could have known.” 

“Yeah,” Tim says, “You’re not exactly the … sharing type. No offense.”

“None taken,” Jon says. He takes the little potted succulent and inspects it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. Tim leans forward a bit. 

“Can I ask … what happened?” he says, and hopes Jon doesn’t start crying, because he’s looking mighty close to tears right now. Tim should have just kept his mouth shut, because despite all of Jon’s antics and rudeness and awkwardness, Tim actually cares about him. At least a bit. 

“My … boyfriend. He … he died.” Jon shudders, as if trying to shake the memory off. He’s still clutching the succulent like Tim wishes he were clutching a glass of whiskey right now.

“Oh, Jon, I am so, so sorry.” Tim hesitates a bit, then puts a hand on Jon’s forearm and squeezes in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture. “Are you … are you okay, Jon?” 

Jon lets out a shaky breath. 

“I mean … not really? I’m dealing with it when I’m not thinking about it, but it’s hard ... “ He trails off and bites his lip.

“You know you can always talk to me, right?” Tim says. He squeezes Jon’s arm again. 

“I know. I appreciate that, Tim,” Jon says. He smiles. “Thank you. If you don’t mind … I’d really like to get back to work.” 

“Of course!” Tim says quickly and stands up from his hair. Jon goes out of the office first, with a sad smile, and when Tim looks back into the empty office, he sees that Jon has taken the little plant with him. 

It’s a couple of months later, the city once more wrapped in a blanket of snow which turns to unappealing brown mush almost within the day, when Tim has to take a break from the case he’s currently researching to admit to himself that he won’t get any further without taking a trip down to the Archives. He complains at length to this about Sasha, who just laughs at him when he tells her she should go instead. After she’s sufficiently made fun of him, though, she tells him to just ask Jon; apparently he has an in with the remaining Archive staff and that he can just go down there and get Tim any of the statements he wants. Tim honestly didn’t know that there were other people who are not Gertrude Robinson working down there until Sasha tells him that even though he’s not officially on the payroll, there’s a young man named Gerry who assists Gertrude sometimes and who appears to be friends with Jon. When he wants to know more, she just shrugs and tells him she’s only met the mysterious Gerry once and that she doesn’t know anything else about him. 

So Tim goes to talk to Jon, who is currently watering his little stolen succulent with care, and asks him for help with the Archives. 

“Oh, just take whatever you want from down there,” Jon says, putting the watering can to the side, “Gertrude won’t mind if you tell her I sent you.” Which is not concerning in the least, considering the old archivist is severely protective of the absolute mess she’s made down there and won’t let anyone in, and the fact that Jon just seems to be able to walk into this chaos and come out unscathed with the right statement in his hands is both impressive and concerning. 

“Would you … mind … coming with me?” Tim gives Jon his most winning smile. “... Please?” 

Jon rolls his eyes. 

“Fine,” he says, “Not like I had anything better to do. This statement is completely made up anyway.” He actually glares at the folder on his desk like it insulted him personally. 

Tim grabs Jon’s hands. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he says, then drags him along. They walk down the stairs together, Tim having to slow significantly because Jon's legs are just so much shorter than his own, until they reach the Archive. The light is turned off in the main room, but there’s light shining through from underneath Gertrude’s office door. Jon presses an ear to it, then says: “She’s recording. That’ll keep her busy for a while yet.” Tim can’t say he isn’t glad to hear that.

“Right, so the file I’m currently working on references a man called Arthur Nolan? It’s about a family of three who burned to death,” Tim says. Jon just stares at him, so he continues: “The coroner called it an accident, but the next of kin think something fishy is going on, and since there’s a note about the landlord I’m inclined to believe them …” Jon is still staring. “What?” 

“Just …” Jon closes his eyes and rubs his temples. “Just be careful, okay?” He goes over to a shelf that holds several cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly on top of each other, takes out one of the boxes, rifles through it, and pulls out a statement. He gives it over to Tim, but before he lets go, he looks him deep in the eye, and a shiver runs down Tim’s spine. For a split-second, Tim thinks he can feel Jon searching his soul, rifling through his memories like he did through the box of statements, reaching into the deepest depths of his very essence, until the moment passes and Jon lets go of the folder. 

“Right,” Jon says quietly, then looks to Gertrude’s door. “You go ahead. I’ll see if she’s finished yet.” 

Later, when Tim has read the statement, which seems to be more a complaint of a young man, living in the same building as the dead family Tim’s investigating, about this landlord, one Arthur Nolan, than a real supernatural encounter, he decides to go talk to the man in person, maybe ask him some pointed questions. He does feel bad about going behind Jon’s back about it, since he really did seem worried, but technically he hadn’t promised him anything. He asks Sasha to accompany him, which she agrees to, and together they head out to Arthur Nolan’s apartment building. 

When they arrive, the building is bathed in a devastating, flickering orange glow.

“Oh, no way!” Sasha says when she sees the flames licking at the old stone walls, but the fire seems to be real, and not just a trick of the light, unfortunately. Tim sighs. 

“There goes my interview,” he laments, “I was gonna ask you to do good-cop-bad-cop!” Sasha laughs. 

“Would I have been the bad cop?” she asks, with a smile. She coughs a bit at the smoke filling the street with undulating, obscuring clouds. 

“No way! I’m the bad cop!” Tim says, and they dissolve into giggles until a murderous-looking police woman shoos them away. 

Back in the car, Tim puts his hand onto the steering wheel and sighs. 

“It’s weird, though,” he says, and looks at Sasha. “I bring Arthur Nolan up to Jon, and he seems to know the guy? Warns me to be careful. I’m always careful!” 

“Tim, you’re literally never careful,” Sasha says. 

“Am so! But anyway, he seems genuinely worried? And then he looks at me like he’s trying to read my mind or something … Yeah.” 

Sasha’s smile disappears at that, and she looks at him with one eyebrow raised. 

“He does that a lot, recently,” she says quietly. “It’s unnerving.” 

Tim looks out of the window at the flames still ravaging the building. Tomorrow he’ll check the hospitals for survivors, but he’s got a feeling that Arthur Nolan won’t be among them. 

Then he sees the car coming slowly down the street. 

“Look!” he says to Sasha and points at it. Her eyes narrow.

“It’s the ECDC,” she says. “Doesn’t confirm anything supernatural.”    
“Confirms that weird shit is going on, though,” Tim says, watching as the unassuming black van screeches to a halt right in front of the burning building. He and Sasha look on as four people in hazmat suits exit the van, two of them going to inspect the burning house, while one of the others talks to the police, and the last one takes a young man wearing a black overall by the arm and directs him to the car. 

“What are they doing?” Tim whispers. 

“Don’t know, but there’s nothing we can do,” Sasha says. “But you’re right. Weird shit is going on.” 

“At least I have something to put in my report,” Tim sighs. 

They drive back to the Institute in silence. When Tim tells Jon that he found the building in flames, Jon looks down at his hands and says: “I figured,” which is not concerning at all. Tim is about to ask him what exactly he knows about Arthur Nolan, when the door opens and Elias struts in, looking eerily gleeful. 

“Tim,” he greets, “I heard you’re investigating the Evans case?” Great. Sounds like Elias is going to ask him invasive questions about his work, which isn’t one of Tim’s favorite pastimes. 

“I am,” he answers through gritted teeth. Elias gives him a smile that’s slightly too wide. 

“Perfect! I have just received information from the hospital that the landlord, a Mr. Nolan, has unfortunately passed away in a fire. Therefore, you will not be required to research the case any further. If you don’t mind, I’ll take a look at the work you’ve compiled so far and then send it down to the Archives for you.” Elias doesn’t wait for an answer, just snatches the folder from Tim’s desk and disappears back to his office with it before Tim and Jon can even say anything.

“Well,” Tim says after a while, “That’s that, then.” 

Jon looks at him. 

“I wish it was, Tim,” he says, his voice colored by exhaustion. “I wish it was.” 

* * *

Martin doesn’t understand why  _ he _ is the one who has to go down to the Archives all the time to deliver Diana’s messages. It’s not like they don’t have a fully-functioning e-mail system that she could use at any time, or that Diana herself is not perfectly able to walk down the stairs to let Getrude know whatever it is she needs to know. Martin does like work in the library; he enjoys the monotony of shelving books and helping the researchers find what they need. It took him some time to get used to their shelving system, but now that he knows it inside and out, the work is fairly easy. He would appreciate it if Diana would actually let him do that work! But no, on a dark Tuesday in February 2015, she greets him by depositing a box of very old-looking books into his hands and telling him to bring them down to the Archive. Getrude had asked for them but apparently couldn’t be bothered to come get them herself, and Diana has some important work to do that includes drinking enormous amounts of energy drinks and shushing some of the louder researchers who came in this morning. 

So, Martin takes the box of books out of the library and over to the Archives. The Institute is a bustling hive of activity today, with people running to and fro, a group of researchers bundling up in thick jackets to go on a field research trip, some administrative workers arguing about some sort of scheduling conflict, and Rosie sitting in the middle of all the chaos, calmly sipping tea from her cup. Martin holds the box with just one hand for a moment to give her a little wave and promptly drops it on the floor, all of the books spilling out.

“Crap,” Martin says, stares at the books for a moment, as if he can make them go back into their box on their own, then sighs and drops to the floor. He puts the box to the side and gathers up some books to stack them, when someone else kneels down beside him. 

“I’ll get them, you put them back in order,” Jonathan Sims says quietly, and Martin’s heart does a little dance. Of course it’s him. Of course Martin embarrasses himself in front of the man he’s had a crush on for years. 

They work quietly for a minute or two; there were a lot of books in that box. Whenever Jon hands him a couple of books and Martin takes them from him, their fingers brush. Jon’s hands are ice cold. 

“Thank you,” Martin says, when they’re done. Jon gets up with a smile and extends his hand out to help Martin up, which he takes gladly. He picks the box up, with both hands, this time. 

“Where were you headed?” Jon asks, and Martin finds himself blushing under his gaze. Gosh, he’s pretty. His hair is now almost shoulder-length and Martin desperately wants to run his fingers through it, to see if it’s as soft as it looks. 

“The, uh, the Archives? Diana said to bring this to Getrude,” Martin stammers. His ears feel like they’re on fire. 

“Great,” Jon says, “That’s where I’m going, too.” 

Jon’s steps are soft and quiet as they walk down the stairs, so Martin feels like a bumbling idiot next to him. In his mind, he’s trying out sentences, aching to start a conversation but unable to figure out how, worried he might embarrass himself even further. Jon doesn’t seem to be a person who appreciates small talk, so Martin chooses to keep his mouth shut. They enter the Archive, Jon holding open the door for Martin to pass through, which makes his heart skip a beat. The main work area with four desks pushed together is illuminated by a dim free-hanging light bulb and electronic candles left over from Christmas, decorated with little red reindeers.

“Put it down over here,” Jon says and pats one of the desks. Martin sets it down just as Getrude’s office door opens and she walks out, followed by a young man wearing exclusively black clothes decorated with silver spikes. 

“Are those the books I ordered from Diana?” Getrude asks, inspecting the books. Her small wire-frame glasses are balancing precariously on the tip of her nose, a chain of pearls attached to them. 

“You want some tea, Jon? Cookies?” the young man asks. 

“Sure, why not,” Jon says, “Martin, this is Gerry. He works with Getrude.” Gerry comes over to shake Martin’s hand. They’re almost the same height, and his grip is intimidatingly strong. 

“So, uh, you’re an assistant here?” Martin asks Gerry, and the man smiles.

“Not really,” he says. “I’m more like a freelancer?” 

“Gerry comes and goes as he pleases,” Jon explains, the slightly annoyed tone in his voice contrasting the fond look in his eyes. Oh. There’s a spike of jealousy hitting Martin’s heart, which is ridiculous, because he has absolutely no claim on Jon whatsoever. 

“Right,” Getrude says, “If I may ask you to leave, Mr. Blackwood; the three of us need to talk about a private matter. Please let Diana know that I appreciate her assistance in regards to the books.” 

“Of course, Ms. Robinson,” Martin says, gives Jon and Gerry a wave goodbye, then backtracks to the library. Before he closes the fire-proof door that separates the Archives from the hallway, however, he hears a short snippet of a sentence. It’s Getrude, sitting down at one of the desks.

“The Dark’s ritual is scheduled to-” 

The door closes, cutting off all sound. 

On March 15th, 2015, Elias Bouchard reports Getrude Robinson as missing. 

Martin sits together with the other librarians as the police call each of them in for questioning, one by one. The police officers all look like they would rather be somewhere else.

Over time, details emerge, and Martin tries to separate fact from fiction: What is indisputable, because it has been revealed by the police, is that when Mr. Bouchard went to check in with Gertrude about some administrative matter, he found her office in disarray and a large stain of blood on the carpet. So far, that’s all they know. Theories that Gertrude was murdered by her assistant, kidnapped by cultists, or faked her death and ran off to join the Russian circus to be a fortune-telling grandma all emerge within the hour. Judy from Research digs up the info that Gerry’s full name is Gerard Keay and that he once was a suspect in his mother’s murder, so currently, the entire Institute seems to be absolutely sure that Gerry had brutally murdered two old women in his lifetime. The fact that he cannot be located by police and that no one has even the faintest idea where he is just supports that theory. Jon is the only one who says it’s absolute bullshit, but he isn’t offering any alternatives, so that’s that. 

A detective wearing a leather coat and combat boots calls Martin into Diana’s repurposed office for questioning. She tells him to sit down across from her. He does.

Her blonde hair is cut very short, and she isn’t wearing any make-up. Her eyes are a very light grey, looking almost white-ish in the stark neon light of Diana’s office. When she looks at Martin, all he wants to do is run away, but that wouldn’t speak very much for his innocence, wouldn’t it? 

“Mr. Blackwood, my name is Detective Tonner, I will be asking you some questions today about the disappearance of one Gertrude Robinson,” she says. Her hands are folded on the desk. Martin can see the handle of a gun peeking out of a holster on her hip. It does not reassure him.

“When was the last time you saw Ms. Robinson?” Detective Tonner asks. She stares at him, apparently not needing to blink … ever. 

“Um … it was … er - I think it was about two weeks ago? I can’t tell you the exact date - Sometime around the end of February? Uh … maybe … yes, no, the end of February. Maybe the 27th? Or the 28th?”

“Right. And was there anything off about her? Any unusual behavior?” 

“I mean, I never- I haven’t- I didn’t really have contact with her? I only met her a couple of times, and that was always at work, she was basically a recluse- I mean, oh god, I mean she  _ is _ a recluse, maybe she’s still-” 

“Mr. Blackwood, please calm down.” Detective Tonner’s gaze is like a shard of ice. Martin shuts up immediately. “What can you tell me about Gerard Keay?” 

“Not much either, I’m afraid! I’ve only met him once, for like two minutes, and then I never saw him again, so … Do you think he killed her?” 

“Hm? Oh, I’m afraid I can’t comment on that at the moment.” The detective writes something down on a little black notepad using one of Diana’s fancy pens, then looks up at Martin again. “What about your whereabouts in the last couple of days?” 

Martin gulps. Great.

“Well, uh, I don’t- I mean I’ve only been at work or at home, except for two days ago, when I visited my mother, uh, and the nurses there could probably … I mean … I don’t really have an alibi or anything for the other days, I live alone …” He trails off. Detective Tonner klicks her pen.

“Right,” she says. “That’s it then. Send in Ms. Campbell, next.” 

He doesn’t exactly flee from the room, but it’s definitely not a dignified exit, either. After sending in Hannah, he collapses on the closest chair he can find and tries to calm himself down by taking several deep, controlled breaths. 

“That bad?” Tom, one of his colleagues, asks with one eyebrow raised. 

“She was so scary!” Martin exclaims, and Tom laughs and nods. “I was so scared! I think she thinks I did it by now!” 

“Nah, she’s probably gonna hunt that Gerard dude for sport, though,” Tom says, “She looks the part. Probably has a whole bunch of guns on her right now.” 

“It’s not like she needs them,” Martin says, “She probably knows how to kill you in a hundred different ways with just her bare hands.” 

Later, when the police officers have left for the day, and Elias Bouchard enters the room instead to let them know that the Institute will be closed for about two weeks to allow the police to finish their investigations and for the Institute employees to deal with the events of the last couple of hours, Martin can finally calm down his racing heartbeat. He leaves the Institute surrounded by a gaggle of his colleagues, when on the way through the foyer, he spots Jonathan Sims, standing in front of the staircase leading to the Archives, staring wistfully at them. Martin excuses himself and walks over to where Jon is standing, hands buried in his pockets.

“Are you okay, Jon?” he asks. Jon flinches, not having noticed Martin’s approach. “Oh, sorry! Didn’t want to scare you.” 

“It’s fine,” Jon says. He doesn’t sound fine. 

They stand in silence for a while, staring at the crime scene tape fluttering in the airflow of the air conditioning, before Jon finally says: “Do you think I could have done more?” 

“Huh?” Martin looks at Jon, who can’t take his eyes off the Archives door. 

“I could have done … more …? I could have … but then … what about me …,” he says, sounding more like he’s talking to himself than to Martin. 

“What are you saying, Jon?” Martin asks, snapping Jon out of his trance once more. 

“Oh, sorry,” he says, “Guess I spaced out there for a moment.” 

“No problem!”, Martin says. “Listen, Jon, I was wondering-” He’s interrupted by Jon’s phone ringing. Of course he is. 

“Sorry, Martin,” Jon says with an apologetic smile, taking out his phone and looking at the caller ID. “I have to take this.” 

“Right, uh, no problem!” Martin says. “I’ll be, er-” 

Jon answers his phone: “Hello? Georgie?” He walks away, through the door, and then he’s gone, while Martin still stands and stares.

“I’ll be going, then,” Martin says. And he does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> elias: hey who tf are you  
> jon: wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy
> 
> The timeline around Gertrude's death is so confusing! The only real date we have is that she was reported missing on the 15th, but then she didn't die until after the Dark's ritual ended, which was on the 20th, unless the ritual she is talking about in MAG 162 is one of the smaller ones (Hither Green Chapel, maybe?), as smaller rituals were held the week before to prepare for the big one, but ughhhggh yeah I'm not really certain about this. Who knows?? Not me!! 
> 
> anyway, as always, find me on tumblr @talizorah, or on twitter @tinybluepixels


	3. oh, holy night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the end, interspersed with deliberations of an Archivist. Also, there is ice cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: death, implied gun violence, canon-typical worms, loss

The smell of old books and rotting paper wafts through the air in an intoxicating wave, mixing together with the metallic smell of blood and the chemicals used to clean it off the carpet. Jon runs his fingers across the spines of the files and folders, knowing their contents and feeling the fear that permeates them. He’s home.

The moment Getrude died, he felt the power rush back into him, hitting him like a tidal wave of relief, paired with the horrible feeling of loss. He hadn’t liked the woman, not at all, but he had grown to know her well over the past year. And yes, he blames himself for not saving her, for not _wanting_ to save her. In the moment of her death, the Archives became his again, which was its own kind of twisted ecstasy, and he wanted to apologize, then changed his mind again; after all, he had waited for this moment since he turned back time. Now, the real work can begin. 

Elias hadn’t even questioned his becoming the Archivist. Jon had just told him: “I am the Archivist.” Apparently, he had made quite an impression, because Elias hadn’t even hesitated before handing him a new contract to sign. He’d then asked if he approved of Tim Stoker, Sasha James, and Martin Blackwood as his assistants, because they’d all already signed the contract. And even though Jon had wanted them to stay out of the Archives, to not be caught and trapped, he couldn’t help being glad about the fact that they would be at his side once more. 

Jon enters his office. He sits down at the brand-new desk they brought in to replace the one covered in Gertrude’s blood, the chair squeaking in protest, and he makes a mental note to requisition a more comfortable one. When he opens the top drawer, he finds a tape recorder already waiting for him.

He feels the moment they open the door and for the first time, walk into the Archives as its creatures, its servants: Sasha, already questioning things, more attuned to the supernatural and it’s particular quirks than he ever was; Tim, broken and bitter and loving and passionate, caught up both in mourning the past and the longing to move on; and Martin, beautiful, perfect Martin, whom he longs to touch and hug close, but cannot. Not yet. It’s too soon, and he’s not about to force things, as much as he might want to. 

Jon gets up and opens the door to greet his people. The tape recorder clicks on.

“Heeeeey, boss!” Tim yells from across the room. Jon leans against the doorway, smiling as the three of them just take in the absolute chaos of the Archives. Sasha drops her bag on the desk that’s closest to the coffee machine. 

“Looks like we got our work cut out for us,” she says, examining a random pile of statements right next to her desk, as Tim starts to complain how she took the best desk without even asking.

Martin smiles shyly at Jon. 

“Would you like some tea?” he asks. 

It’s a start.

* * *

They fall into a routine, quickly. Tim and Sasha are already experienced researchers, so they show Martin the ropes, which he appreciates, and they often sit at their desks and talk through statements together. Jon lets them know very early on that he doesn’t want anyone going anywhere on their own, and they roll their eyes and chuckle at him, but they do promise. And they honor that promise, mostly. 

Martin has the desk closest to Jon’s office. His back is to Jon’s door, which has caused several close calls when Jon just … appears out of nowhere behind him to look over his shoulder and then scares him half to death when he does decide to make a comment. It happens more often than one would think. However, what surprises Martin most of all, is that Jon is actually a good boss. He lets them do their work in peace and when they have questions, he answers them. And he’s usually right, too. When Martin makes a mistake, Jon doesn’t look at him with disappointment, but with understanding and sometimes, pity or sadness, which arguably hurts more, but then he stops whatever he’s doing and helps Martin correct the mistake. It’s … nice. Jon’s door is almost always open, and whenever he hits a block in the road in his research and neither Tim nor Sasha have any ideas, he asks Jon for help and always receives a hint that’s just the thing to get the ball rolling again. 

The statements are weird, though. 

It’s not the statements themselves, of course, though there is a lot of weird stuff in them, of course. It’s how Jon chooses them: Sometimes, he just hands them one that he thinks they’ll find interesting, or one that ‘drew his eye’, or he will do the opposite and rip one out of their hands that he thinks they’re ‘not ready for.’ It’s frustrating, and seemingly random, and it has caused Tim to lose his cool on more than one occasion. 

The first statement that is different is about a coffin. Martin has been busy digitizing the statements he found in the boxes that surround his desk and then doing a bit of research on them, just as Jon wants, but he never spends too long on them, because they are usually easily proven to be fake. They even have fancy microphones to record them on their computers, and Martin actually enjoys the monotony of reading, scanning, and recording that now mark his days in an ongoing, everlasting flow of work. 

The day Martin finds the statement, he’s the only one who spends his lunch break at his desk: Sasha and Tim are getting stuff from the cafeteria, and Jon is meeting a friend for lunch, which makes Martin only a little bit jealous (Jon never goes out to lunch with _him_ ), and he decides to distract himself by working. The petty part of him compels him to start eating his sandwich at his desk while he picks out a new statement to record, which Jon hates because he doesn’t want crumbs in the statement folders. A tiny bit of revenge for an imagined slight. Martin sighs, knowing he is being pathetic right now. He runs his fingertips over the statements in the box closest to him, picking one that feels right, and pulling it out of the box. With his foot, he pushes the box away again, deposits the statement on his desk, and stares at it for a moment, wondering why he’s suddenly afraid. It’s just paper. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s being childish.

So he picks up the folder, and records the statement, and shudders when he reads it because this one does feel different, somehow, and when he tries to play it back to check his work, there’s nothing but the never-changing, deafening rush of static in his ears. He plays it again, and once more, the static fills the air. 

“That’s odd,” he says, out loud. No one’s here to judge him for talking to himself. 

* * *

  
  


The air is heavy with fog and moisture as Jon makes his way to the little restaurant Georgie chose for their monthly meetings. It’s the tiny Hungarian place she likes so much, which he let her choose because food doesn’t matter to him, now that he is once again the Archivist. He’s running late. 

The moment he enters the restaurant, he Knows Georgie did not come alone. 

It hurts, seeing Melanie again. She’s looking at him with her dark eyes and he feels the guilt, feels it stab his heart with thousands of tiny daggers. Maybe this time, he can do better. He’d like to. 

Jon sits down across from Georgie and smiles in greeting at them both. 

“Georgie, Melanie, nice to see you,” he says.

“Hello, Jon-” Georgie starts a sentence, but Melanie interrupts her.

“How do you know my name?” she asks. God, how he had missed her.

“I’m a fan of your show. And Georgie talks about you a lot,” he says and gives her a shrug and what he hopes is a friendly smile. He’s … never been good with emotions. 

“You watch my show?” Melanie says, her eyebrows raised, “Do you … like it?” 

“... I do, yes,” he says, and then the waiter interrupts them.

Later, when he comes back to the Institute, heart full of joy and ribs aching with laughter, there’s something permeating the air: fear. He opens the door to the Archives and sees it: A statement, sitting on Martin’s desk, with the man himself at Sasha’s computer, muttering to himself, and trying to take apart the microphone they use for recording. It’s the statement of Joshua Gillespie, the first statement Jon encountered that featured the coffin. Certainly, it’s not ideal that Martin found it, but they’ve got to start somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. Jon has been putting it off long enough.

“It won’t work,” Jon says, and Martin’s head jerks up in surprise.

“Oh, Jon, didn’t see you come in!” he says, eyes lighting up. God, has he always been this hopeless? 

“Sorry for scaring you. Anyway, some statements won’t record on your computers,” he says and grabs a tape recorder that just popped into existence a moment ago. He hands it to Martin, “Use this instead.”

Martin takes the tape recorder and stares at it like it might bite him. There’s suspicion in his eyes, which is good. He looks up at Jon.

“Why?” he asks. “I mean, why won’t they record?” 

Jon sighs. 

“I’m afraid, Martin, you’ll have to figure that out yourself,” he says and retreats to his office. He’s aware, of course, that he sounds just like Elias. Jonah. Whatever. 

It’s not the first time that he sits there and wishes he could just tell all of them everything. To gather Martin, Sasha, Tim, Melanie, Georgie, Basira, and Daisy in a room and just … tell them. Explain the Entities, then go on about his personal journey and their connections to him and to each other. Try to make them understand that the entire world is at stake here. But he won’t. No one would believe him; Daisy might actually shoot him. Absent-mindedly, Jon reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the keyring. The keys jangle against each other and shine in the bright neon light of Jon’s office. Where did they come from? Are they a message? A task? Or a sinister gift, like the table, just waiting to attack? A mystery, a riddle, to be sure. 

He drops the keys back into his pocket. 

Jon feels when Sasha and Tim come back; it’s a peculiar feeling. There’s an apprehension when he deals with Sasha, as even now, after so much time, memories of Not-Sasha threaten to overwrite these new memories he makes with the real Sasha. Sometimes when he looks up at her he is surprised that now she is indeed taller than him, and that her hair is long and curly instead of a short pixie cut, and that she wears glasses all the time instead of only putting them on to read. He likes this Sasha better, though. She has an easy smile and endless patience for Tim’s shenanigans, something that Not-Sasha never had. 

Today, Tim is dressed in very skinny jeans and a red-and-white polka-dotted shirt. He’s wearing glasses he doesn’t need, because “everyone else down here does and I want to fit in, _Jon_ ,” and for some reason, green shoes. Jon knows when Tim sits down, and he knows when Martin shows both him and Sasha the tape recorder, and he knows when Martin tells them about the statement that just won’t record. 

“I used your computer, Sasha, to see if it was a problem with mine,” Martin says, “... Sorry.” 

Sasha laughs it off; she hands Martin the pastry they brought him. 

“What was the statement about?” she asks. 

“A coffin,” Martin says, “And it’s really weird! I mean, all of the statements are weird, of course, but this one … It’s just really unsettling.” 

“Hand it over!” Tim says, grabbing the file before Martin can do as requested, and leafs through it. 

Jon listens as they record the statement on tape together; he hears the sweet crackle of the recorder as Martin reads the statement out loud once more, and how, after he clicks the recorder off, they start discussing on how to best approach the research that is to be done. 

Jon is thinking about Helen. 

He’s saved Gerry’s life by getting him to go to a single doctor’s appointment. It was almost too easy; Jon gets suspicious these days if things are too easy. Right now, he knows Gerry is giving yet another interview to the police, even though Jon has made sure that he has an airtight alibi for the entire week leading up to Gertrude’s disappearance by making him go to Ny-Alesund, to watch the Dark’s ritual happening up close. There’s flight records and hotel bills and a very friendly receptionist who confirmed Gerry’s presence at the hotel to the police. Still, he’s apparently still subject number one, especially since the police don’t seem to be too focused on actually doing real work to solve the case. Anyway, Gerry is fine so far, which is at least one life saved - a success, in Jon’s book. 

But can he save Helen? Should he save Helen? After all, Helen becoming the Distortion had saved his own life, saved him from Michael, but wouldn’t it be selfish to avoid saving her just so he won’t have to deal with Michael? It wouldn’t make sense, especially as he’s sure that Michael couldn’t actually kill him now that he’s a fully realized Avatar. So how to do it? She would certainly be suspicious to him randomly turning up and telling her to give up her job or at least avoid this one house. And he’s sure that if Michael really wants to, he could get Helen anywhere, not just inside the house at St. Alban’s Avenue. 

And then, of course, there’s the Distortion itself, with its winding, weaving corridors, deceiving doors, and warped sense of reality. The Distortion is one of the things that still genuinely scare him; he’d gotten complacent with Helen, in the end, which was exactly what it wanted. It isn’t just the doors or the corridors; it is the feeling that you can never trust any of your friends, the uncertainty if they really truly are your friend or if they are only there to use you and stab you in the back, which is precisely the thing that had been Jon’s downfall. He’d made the decision to trust his friends without conditions, just before the Unknowing, in another time; he wishes he’d made it earlier. For now, Jon wants to stand by that decision, but it is almost a certainty that the Distortion will return to challenge that decision, to send him down that spiral of paranoia again. So, how to proceed with Helen? She is, as much as the Distortion can be, a known quantity. But knowing that saving her is a possibility, could he live with himself if he let her die anyway, turning his face away from the tragedy, just like he did with Gertrude?

In the end, what he does is this, and it’s not the most ingenious of plans: He looks up voice modulators online. When he’s found one he can use, he places a call to Wolverton Kendrick, and when a pleasant voice answers the phone, he asks for Ms. Richardson, who so kindly showed him and his husband a house a week ago, and he would like to ask her some more questions about it. He gets put on hold for a minute, then he hears her. It’s the same voice, but unaccompanied by the characteristic distortion that had made shivers run down his spine so many times. Her normal voice is almost jarring, unfamiliar; he thinks back to her statement, about how she frantically drew countless maps in pencil before starting to talk, about her curly hair and how it had fallen into her face whenever she turned her head, about her hands, playing nervously with the pencil she had stolen from his desk to draw her maps. He realizes that it was probably one of the maps she drew that helped her find Michael and wonders just how smart Helen must have been to chart a place that by its very nature must have been impossible to figure out. 

“Helen Richardson,” she says, in greeting. Her voice is dry and empty of any emotion. 

“Ms. Richardson,” he says, “Don’t say anything. There is a house at St. Alban’s Avenue, in Chiswick, that you will be showing to a group soon. Do not open the door under any circumstances.” 

“Who is this? What are you-” Jon puts down the phone. 

It won’t be enough. She will still show the house. She will see the door. She will remember this call, and ignore his warning. She will open the door. Jon sighs, and puts his face into his hands. There’s so much to do, so much to fix, so much to think of. But, at least in this case, he still has a little time. 

There is something else, though, that he has to do. He fishes the statement of Timothy Hodge out from where he stashed in his desk. The nearest danger of consequence is called Jane Prentiss, and there’s a lot to prepare for. 

* * *

Martin _hates_ the Hodge statement. Hates it more than anything he’s read so far. He doesn’t have anything about worms in particular, but the mental image he conjures up of that poor girl … bursting open, her insides full of worms … It’s not a thing you want to think about while eating, but unfortunately, it’s all Martin can think about, especially when he stirs his spoon through the leftover pasta he brought for lunch and it makes a horrible squelching sound that he imagines is exactly what those worms sounded like. He’s almost sorry that he found it in one of the boxes, sticking out just a little bit, as if saying ‘read me! I’m important!’, or at least he would be, if it hadn’t actually been very important indeed, and he is just waiting for the others to come back from their coffee run so that they can start discussing what to do. Maybe Timothy Hodge can still be saved? Martin doubts it. 

He puts the pasta away just as Jon, Tim, and Sasha come walking down the stairs; Tim holds the door for Jon, who is carrying three takeaway cups of lattes. Sasha is holding the fourth one, periodically taking sips from it. Jon deposits one of the cups in front of Martin.

“Thanks, Jon,” Martin says, and then: “There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about? With this statement I found today. It’s one of the ones that won’t record, and there’s something really distressing in it.” 

Jon steals Tim’s chair, resulting in Tim protesting for a bit, but then sitting down on top of his desk. Sasha remains standing. Martin puts the statement in the middle.

“It’s a statement by Timothy Hodge, given December 2014,” he says. 

“That’s not too long ago,” Tim says.

“Yeah, but with the state Gertrude left the Archives in …” Jon sighs and rubs his forehead. It’s a lament they’ve heard often from him, so everyone ignores him.

“Anyway, he had sexual relations with a victim of Jane Prentiss, one Harriet Lee,” Martin says, pointing at the relevant line in the statement where Harriet had described the way she had been mugged. “At least, I _think_ this refers to Jane Prentiss? Maybe there’s more than one worm lady running around.” 

“Good God,” Sasha says, putting down her coffee. “Give me that.” She takes the statement, presses the power button on her computer, then starts skimming the handwritten statement. 

“I will notify the ECDC,” Jon says. He doesn’t seem surprised or alarmed about any of this in the slightest, which is weird. But it’s Jon, and weird is his normal, so Martin doesn’t care. Or does he? He’s not sure. 

“I’ll look into the police reports,” Sasha says, turning a page, “He states that he burned down the flat with her body in it. There must be records of that.” She sits down at her desk and starts typing something. 

“And I will stand around and look pretty!” Tim announces. Jon rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll look into the missing persons reports for both Timothy Hodge and this girl. What was her name again?” Tim starts up his computer, too. Jon still sits in his chair, though. 

“Harriet Lee,” Martin prompts, and Tim gets to work, bent over the keyboard. 

“Right here, that was quick,” he says, “She’s been reported missing on December 12th.” 

“Do you think Timothy is still alive?” Martin asks Jon, who looks him directly in the eye. There it is again: That feeling, as if his soul is being searched, as if Jon knows every single thought that ever passed through Martin’s brain. And then it’s gone, and once again Martin wonders if it was just his imagination running wild, because Jon’s eyes are really pretty and he likes to look at them and maybe he’s making things up and okay, he needs to calm down now before he embarasses himself. 

“No,” Jon says, “It’s been too long since he gave that statement. Let’s hope the ECDC finds him, and fast.” 

“You think he’s dangerous, boss?” Tim asks, eyes glued to the computer screen as he reads through police files. 

“Very,” Jon says, and takes a long sip of his coffee. He gets up from Tim’s chair with a quiet groan and heads to his office. “I’m going to call the ECDC now. Let me know when you finish researching, and I’ll record the statement to tape. Unless you want to do it?” He looks at Martin. 

“Not … really,” Martin says. “But I’ll do it if you want me to! Jon? … Jon?” Jon closes the office door, chuckling quietly to himself. Martin looks at Tim and Sasha, puzzled. 

“Does he want me to do it or not? What is going on?” he asks, and they all erupt in laughter. 

* * *

Does Martin need to be attacked and besieged by Jane Prentiss, or is that a thing that Jon can save him from? 

Jon sits in his office, having had a tasty Buried statement which will probably keep him fed for a couple of days, and stares at his phone. He remembers the text messages Jane sent from Martin’s phone, telling them that everythings alright but that he won’t be coming to work because he had a ‘stomach bug’ or a ‘parasite’. It still keeps him up at night, and he’s apologized to Martin so many times for not realizing that something was wrong. Of course, Martin’s statement set events in motion that led to them huddled together in a tiny room, hiding from worms, so isn’t this necessary? What if this _needs_ to happen? 

But he also remembers just how distraught Martin was after he finally escaped and started living in the Archives, how paranoid and scared. He had refused to eat canned peaches even at the very end, and Jon couldn’t really fault him for that, at the time. He loves Martin, so much. He misses him, his heart aches, and he just wants him to be happy. Having him scared to death hiding in his flat from a wave of worms, not knowing if he will ever get out of there or die a gruesome death, probably isn’t going to make Martin happy. So, if Jon can prevent the whole thing from happening, it will probably be good. 

He keeps the statement of Carlos Vittery, about his arachnophobia, safe in the one drawer in his desk that he can actually lock. In his last life, he never found the key to this drawer, and had assumed that Getrude lost it somewhere (maybe even on purpose); this time, one of the keys from his mysterious keyring fits it perfectly. Should he stage the statement in the main Archives, like he did with the Hodge statement, for his team to find? Or should he keep it here with him, locked in a cabinet that doesn’t really have a key, so that Martin will never know to investigate Carlos Vittery’s apartment complex? Which leads him to a question that has been plaguing him for weeks: Should he just go kill Jane Prentiss? 

He knows how to do it. Sasha hasn’t met Michael and found out the method to kill the worms yet, but _he_ knows, and there’s a fire extinguisher just outside his office door that he could use. And if that fails, he’s sure he could just compel a statement out of her that would both feed him for weeks and weaken her considerably. He’s killed Peter Lukas, he’s killed Helen and Jared and Not-Sasha and countless others; he’s even killed Jonah Magnus, in the end. Jane Prentiss is nothing. Jane Prentiss is easy. 

But Jane Prentiss is also a thing he knows for sure how to deal with. With Elias out there plotting how to get him marked by every entity, who knows what Corruption monster he will send after Jon if Jane doesn’t mark him. For a minute or two, Jon imagines a sentient pile of mold growing on him, which doesn’t sound pleasant at all. At least with Jane, he knows how to harm her and her writhing army of worms. He knows what will happen, knows when she will arrive. 

Jon hates himself. He really, really does. He hates himself all the way through unlocking the drawer, taking out the statement, and putting it on the pile of other statements on Martin’s desk. Martin will hate him for this, when he finds out that Jon knew what was going to happen. It’s something that Jon will have to deal with, eventually. 

Time is a hard thing for someone who’s lived in a world where the concept of it didn’t exist, so it’s on his way to work that the Eye helpfully lets Jon know that it is, in fact, Martin’s birthday. He stops in his tracks, causing some lady to bump into him and frantically apologize, then turns around. Most of the stores around town are still closed as it is ridiculously early in the morning, but he does manage to find a small gift shop that sells upscale organic teas, which he buys a small selection of, and he also picks up a nice, fairly expensive pen that Martin could use to write poems with, and a simple card that says ‘happy birthday’. His heart aches a little that he can’t get him gifts that better express his feelings for Martin, but since right now they’re just boss and subordinate, not even friends, it’s probably better if he doesn’t spend a fortune on gifts. Still, he feels bad, and he feels worse for forgetting Martin’s birthday altogether, and then even worse when he realizes he doesn’t have the time (or the gift wrap, for that matter) to wrap them himself. The lady at the store does a lovely job, though, and Jon makes it to the Archives still technically on time, but a lot later than he usually does, the gift clutched in his hands and slightly out of breath. 

Normally, he’s the first one down here; today, the lights are already on and the sound of water slowly coming to a boil in the cheap kettle that Martin uses to make tea filling the Archives. Jon steps as lightly as possible and sets the gift onto Martin’s desk, then heads to his office to hide so he doesn’t have to watch him open it. Before he closes the door, however, he stops to listen when he hears a faint humming; it’s coming from one of the storage rooms and it appears to be Martin, who arrived first today and still thinks himself alone, and is enjoying this quiet and short respite before another workday by singing softly to himself. It’s surprisingly adorable, and Jon has to suppress the tears that well up in his eyes. He closes the door, leaves the lights in his office shut off, then presses his ear to the door so that he can continue to listen. Martin cannot carry a tune to save his life, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s _Martin_ , and Jon misses him _so much_ -

Martin stops singing and there’s a soft little gasp as he finds the gift on his desk. Jon hears the crackle of wrapping paper being ripped open and bunched together, and then silence. Jon closes his eyes as a single tear rolls down his cheek.

Tim and Sasha arrive later, with coordinated shouts of “Happy Birthday, Martin!”, before they launch into a very enthusiastic rendition of the Happy Birthday song. Jon leaves his office to join them (though he does not sing), and officially also wishes Martin a happy birthday. Tim is holding a blue balloon that says ‘It’s a Boy!’ on the side, while Sasha is carefully lighting colorful candles stuck into a small store-bought cake.

“No fire in the Archives, Sasha!” Jon warns, and Sasha looks up at him sheepishly, but doesn’t move to stop. Jon rolls his eyes. “Fine, Martin’s just gonna have to blow them out really fast.” Tim cheers loudly. 

They do end up going out for ice cream for lunch, just like last time. Jon feels terrible that in his past life, he just forgot about this day, because when they go to the little ice cream parlor and sit down after getting their ice creams, he’s having the most fun he’s had in a long time. Martin seems genuinely touched that his colleagues actually did something for his birthday, and Jon hasn’t had ice cream in a long time and savors the sweet taste of it. He remembers the tape that Elias sent him, after the world went wrong - the recording of his own birthday party (which he is now secretly looking forward to experiencing again, now that he appreciates Tim and Sasha and Martin so much more), where Tim teased him for forgetting this, and where Martin remembered which flavor Jon got and what they talked about - Good God, had he really been so oblivious to Martin’s crush? He’d played that tape over and over and over again, desperately wishing he could turn back time and do it all over again; who knew, turns out he could. 

There’s desperation and pain waiting for all four of them in the future, but right now, he’s here, spooning sickly sweet ice cream into his mouth, laughing as Sasha calls Tim weird when he admits to biting popsicles when he has them (“You’re not supposed to bite them, you lick them!”), and defending himself when he is attacked by Tim for his love of raisins.

“They’re weird food, Jon!” Tim exclaims, “They’re just dead grapes! They’re zombie grapes! Grape mummies! They’re grape mummies, Jon, and you just ... eat them! It’s disgusting!” 

“I do, they’re good!” Jon says, breathless from laughter. “Sometimes, food is weird!”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you need to enjoy it!” Tim says. Sasha snorts, which prompts another flash of laughter from the others. 

It’s nice. His ribs hurt from laughing, and he feels loved in a way he hasn’t in a long time. He looks over at Martin, whose eyes sparkle with joy, and has to catch himself before he says ‘I love you.’ He looks down at the ice cream, rapidly melting in his bowl, and feels the smile fading from his face. Tim and Sasha enter into another heated discussion centered around the proper way to eat sweets, but Martin notices that something is going on. Of course he does. He cares so much.

“Are you okay, Jon?” he asks, quiet enough that Sasha and Tim don’t hear. 

Jon looks up at Martin and gives him a small smile. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he says, “Just thinking about how nice this is.” 

“I know what you mean,” Martin says. He takes a bite of his strawberry ice cream. “I haven’t had a birthday this nice in a long time.” 

“That is literally the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Tim says, apparently having interrupted his heated discussion with Sasha just to make this comment. 

“Oh, don’t be rude, Tim,” Sasha says and hits him with her spoon. 

“Hey, I like it like this!” Martin says, “I don’t need a big party or anything. This is perfect.” 

“Yeah, I’m surprised Jon is letting us have so much fun!” Sasha teases. 

“Hey!” Jon protests, “I like to think I’m a ‘chill’ boss. Is that what the kids are still saying?” 

“Oh my God, Jon, you are literally ancient,” Tim says. “Were you born in the stone age?” 

“If you consider 1987 the stone age, sure,” Jon says with a smile. 

“Wait what? You’re younger than me?” Martin stutters and drops his spoon. “No way!” 

“Wow, boss,” Tim says, face suddenly so serious that it can only be in mocking, “Guess you really did invent the process of prematurely graying!” Sasha has to suppress a laugh, but doesn’t succeed, so she sputters around while slapping Tim’s arm repeatedly. Tim is grinning. 

“Nah, I got my first gray hair with sixteen and I was angry that it took so long,” he says, shrugs, and gives Tim a grin. They all howl with laughter, drawing several disapproving stares from the other ice cream parlor patrons. 

“But seriously boss,” Tim says after they calm down, a more serious smile on his face, “Thanks for taking us out today.” 

“Of course,” Jon says. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” 

They gather their things, put on their jackets, and leave the parlor, chatting and laughing. The weather outside is as nice as weather in London can be as they begin their short walk back to the Institute. Jon ends up walking next to Sasha a few meters behind Tim and Martin, comfortable in the silence between them, marveling at the way the sun warms the back of his neck, the way the sky is an unending and blissfully empty blue, and the way the only sounds he hears are those of a busy city, where most people live normal lives and die normal deaths. He’s been back for what many would consider a long time, but it still seems new to him, and he’s thankful. Thankful that he gets to experience this again; thankful that he has been given another chance. He’s taking a deep breath of London air when Sasha interrupts his thoughts. 

“You know, you’re really weird, Jon,” she says. She’s not looking at him. 

“I get that a lot,” he says. “I don’t mind, though. I guess I am.” 

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be,” Sasha agrees, “But that’s not what I wanted to say.” She’s silent for a moment, head tilted softly to the side. Jon looks up at her, but gives her time. “I was angry that you got the Head Archivist job over me.” 

“Oh, Sasha, I’m sorry-” 

“No, it’s fine. I guess it isn’t your fault. But I went into this job hating you a little bit because I didn’t think you deserved it over me,” she says, and sighs. She tucks a strand of hair that’s fallen into her face behind her ear. “But I guess you’re okay.” 

“So, you don’t hate me?” Jon asks. 

“No, I guess not. You’re just a weirdo, and I know there’s something going on with you and Elias, and I’m gonna figure out what it is, but I don’t hate you anymore.” She sighs again. 

“I’m glad,” Jon says, quietly. “I would like us to be friends, eventually.” 

“Maybe, Sims. You’re on thin ice.” They both chuckle. “Just … Don’t hurt Martin, okay?” She is looking at him now, brows narrowed. 

“I would never,” Jon says, and it’s both a promise to her and to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written a lot this week because I'm stuck in finals hell, but I did hit 50k! So that's a thing that happened. 
> 
> As always, I appreciate each and every kudo, comment, and bookmark, and if you want to yell at me away from the comment section, feel free to hmu on tumblr @talizorah.


	4. some watcher of the skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Account of a birthday party, flanked by two statements and several revelations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: insomnia, memory loss, Elias Bouchard, loneliness, loss
> 
> General concept of first statement taken from MAG 74, but rewritten.  
> Some dialogue taken from MAG 161.

It’s June; the sweltering, oppressive heat, trapped between London’s buildings, is impossible to escape. The Archives are climate-controlled, however, and nothing will stop Jon from drinking scalding hot tea. Sasha comes to work wearing cute little sundresses and Tim leaves several buttons of his shirts unbuttoned, a move which makes several of their non-Archive colleagues jealous, because they would immediately be reprimanded for not following the Institute dress code, something that never seems to happen to Archive employees. One time, Jon arrives at work wearing a normal cotton t-shirt instead of his usual dress shirt and vest combo, and Tim pretends to have a heart attack, after which he proceeds to tease Jon throughout the day about how provocative he’s looking with his elbows and lower arms showing, how scandalous! 

It’s on one of these sticky hot days that Lydia Halligan comes stumbling down the Archives steps, looking about as tired as Jon is feeling. Sasha lends her an arm to keep her from falling. 

Jon doesn’t want to remember the reason why he didn’t take her statement personally last time, but the Eye graciously offers him the memory anyway: He had made up some stupid irrelevant reason to avoid doing so, because he had had a bad day and didn’t want to interact with people. Instead, she had been led to a desk, where she filled out a form and wrote down her statement in shaky handwriting and left, only to die of a heart attack a month later. 

Had he really been this much of an asshole? Every day, he looks back on the first time he lived through this and is ashamed at his behavior. And every day he thanks his God that he gets to do it better this time. 

So, just as Sasha offers Lydia a glass of water, which she refuses, and a coffee, which she accepts, Jon opens his door and sticks his head out into the main Archives. 

“Would you mind coming in here and I’ll take your statement personally, Ms. Halligan?” he says. 

Since he fell through the door back in time, his dreams have been empty, blissfully so. No nightmares, no fears, no torture. He’s not especially keen to change that, to go back to tormenting both others and himself in his dreams, to watch and wait and observe once more, but it can’t be helped. His powers are weaker now than they have been just before the world went wrong, so he doesn’t need live statements as often as he needed them then, but he feels himself getting hungrier and weaker every day. Eventually, he will really need them again, no way around it. Might as well bite the bullet now. He thinks of Basira, telling him to stop, that it wasn’t right; he thinks of Helen, telling him to stop fighting it. He thinks of Martin, because he always does. 

Lydia hesitates before stepping into his office. Jon closes the door behind her and directs her to the chair he keeps just for visitors. He doesn’t bother handing her the form to fill out; he can do that himself later. Instead, he sits down, notes that a new tape recorder sprung into existence next to his elbow, already running (Lydia doesn’t seem to care at all), and smiles what he hopes is an encouraging smile at her. 

“Just go at your own pace, Ms. Halligan. And please, forgive us for using a tape recorder instead of more modern equipment. We’re all very old-fashioned here,” he says. She gives just a shrug in response. The door opens once again; it’s Sasha, holding a steaming cup of black coffee, which she sets down in front of Lydia. 

“Thank you,” Lydia says, giving Sasha a tired smile. 

“Statement of Lydia Halligan, regarding …?” 

“Uhm … Regarding my insomnia.” 

“Thank you. Statement recorded direct from subject, June 8th, 2015. Statement begins.” 

She’s quiet for some time, staring at the tape recorder as it spins and dutifully records the silence. Jon doesn’t push her. He’s not in a hurry.

“I don’t remember sleeping. I don’t know when I last slept … I can’t really tell. Sorry … I’m a little out of it.” 

“It’s fine. Please, don’t feel pressured by my presence.” 

Her eyes are unfocused, still staring in the general direction of the tape recorder. Jon is overcome with the sudden urge to get up and give her a hug. But he doesn’t. 

“The heat is unbearable. I’ve read thousands of newspaper articles and scientific journals and they all say that your room should be cold for a good sleep. I know I have the heating off, because it automatically turns off in summer, but the heat is still there, suffocating and sticky, lying over me like a blanket made of heavy air … or of stone. It keeps me down, keeps me covered even when I kick off my real blanket and just lie there, on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling fan. I’ve followed all the tips and tricks ‘sleep experts’ recommend. I turn off all screens hours before I lie down. I drink chamomile tea and put a drop of lavender essential oil on my pillow. I count sheep, I try to sing myself to sleep, but I can’t. I just keep staring up at the ceiling fan, until it stops spinning, until it starts spinning the other way around. You know, I don’t even remember that there was a ceiling fan when I moved in. And I certainly didn’t buy one, or have one installed. I don’t have the money for that.

“I work as a freelance writer, you know? It’s a terrible job with terrible pay, and little actual writing, which is just as well, because I haven’t written anything substantial in these past couple of months. I used to write the best in the hours after midnight. When I still lived at my mother’s place, that was the earliest I could be alone without her nagging me about something every other minute. There was just absolute peace and quiet and nothing to distract me from my writing. But all I do now is lie in bed, try to sleep, and when I don’t, I do spreadsheets and budgets and I chase down clients who don’t know what they want and how they want it, only that the way I do is wrong and that I need to re-do it, and it makes me so tired. I stay up later and later, finishing this project. I just need five hundred words more, I can stay up and sleep less. It doesn’t matter. I don’t sleep anyway. 

“Sometimes, there’s a man in my living room. He has blond curls and large hands. I draw fractals and I draw spirals and he is there, laughing at them, telling me they’re wrong. Sometimes he’s there and he has dark hair and large hands, but he’s still the same … thing. The same being. He looks different, but he’s the same. He tells me I look terrible. I know that. He doesn’t need to tell me. He does it anyway.” 

She goes on, for a very long time. It all spills out from her lips, her fear and suffering laid bare in front of Jon. There’s more here than there was when she wrote it down on paper, as if Jon is pulling more of her pain out of her, and he would feel bad about it if he wasn’t so busy drinking it all in, relishing in the rush of strength that flows through his body and makes his blood sing. She talks and talks and talks and Jon listens, his eyes fixed on her. The tape recorder runs and spins around. She picks up a pencil from the desk; Jon doesn’t remember it being there. It doesn’t look like one of his. There’s a colorful spiral pattern on it, winding itself around the pencil in a never-ending line. She draws a fractal on a piece of paper that appears in the blink of an eye, still talking, words tumbling from her lips first in short, fragmented sentences, which get longer and longer and longer the more she talks, running along until she talks without taking breaths. Tears begin to run from her eyes; she either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice. 

Finally, Lydia stops, and with it, rips both herself and Jon from the trance that has caught them in its web. She reaches up to wipe away the tears from under her eyes. Jon rummages around in one of his desk drawers until he finds a tissue and hands it to her. 

“Statement … ends,” Jon says. The tape recorder keeps running as he softly puts one hand on hers. “Are you feeling okay?” 

She sniffles a bit into her tissue, then shakes her head. The tears keep coming. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, and he means it. He’s … ashamed. The rush of the live statement consumed him, and that scares him. He never wanted to be a monster, and after regaining some of his humanity when he came back, he’s reluctant to let it go again, let it slip through his fingers with a single, carelessly taken statement. 

“No, it’s not your fault,” she says. It is, but she doesn’t know that. 

“If it helps,” he starts saying, but hesitates. He’s not really sure how to help. He can only give advice. “The man …. The being in your living room is very dangerous. He’s playing a game with you that will end with his amusement and your death. Don’t let him win.” 

She looks up at him, eyes finally focused. 

“How?” she asks, voice quiet, almost inaudible. “Is he doing this to me?” 

“I don’t know if he is the cause or if he’s just encouraging it,” Jon says, patting her hand gently, “But you need to stand up to him. Tell him to leave. Threaten him with my name if need be. He can come cry about it to me.” He’s not afraid of Michael. Not anymore. He’s killed the Distortion once before, he can do so again. Sure, it might be unwise, but right now, all he can think about is this poor woman in front of him who will die of what will be called a ‘heart attack’ in a month and he has had enough. He told Gertrude that he will try to save as many as he can, and while he was technically only talking about his friends and assistants, this woman here needs his help right now and if he can give it, if he can save her life, he will do it. Jon has always been prone to rash decisions, his very own moral compass dictating his actions, but they have always been and still are done with the best intentions in mind. 

“How … What do I even say?” She’s still crying. This is his fault. 

“Tell him that you’re under the Archivist’s protection. Tell him to talk to me personally. Maybe it’s nothing, and he’s just observing. But if he isn’t, if he’s causing this, tell him to stop and to come here. Okay?” 

“... Okay.” The pencil is gone. Jon doesn’t particularly care to find out where it went. The tape recorder shuts itself off with an audible click. 

He ends up escorting her out of the Archives and up the stairs. She’s holding on to his arm like it’s her lifeline until he puts her in the taxi Rosie calls for her. He waves goodbye and hopes she’ll sleep tonight. Maybe it will help. Maybe not. 

He’ll know it when he sees her in his dreams. 

What does worry him is her description of Michael. In every single statement, his blond curly hair was the one constant thing about him. Never, in any of the statements Jon has read in both his lifetimes, has he been described as dark-haired. Lydia had made it clear that she considered them both to be the same being, so was this another manifestation of the Distortion? It would make sense that he could change his appearance around at will, but he never did until Helen replaced him, at least not as far as Jon knows. And how much did being Michael, or Helen for that matter, limit the Distortion and how they would appear to potential victims? 

It was all very confusing and Jon can feel a headache coming, so he takes a sip of the now-lukewarm tea that Martin made him earlier this morning and picks up a pen (without a spiral pattern on it; he makes sure to check that) to fill out the paperwork for Lydia’s statement. What this does prove is that the statements can change, that there’s more for him to know and that it’s worth taking the same statements again, even though he already has already taken them once before in another life. 

With a sigh, he signs the form, ejects the tape from the recorder, and files the statement away to where Sasha won’t find it. 

* * *

There’s a compartment in Martin’s desk that is perfectly sized for hiding items the size of, say, a rum and chocolate birthday cake with candles stuck into it and covered in chocolate sprinkles, which is exactly what he’s currently using it for. Tim is hiding the bottle of wine in his backpack, but he cannot hide the gleeful smile on his face. 

“Is he late? He’s not late, is he? He’s never late!” Sasha says, voice low and eyes fixed on the clock that’s steadily ticking towards Jon’s usual time of arrival.

“Relax, Sasha!” Tim says. He’s working hard not to dissolve into giggles. 

“You guys are totally going to give us away!” Martin complains. “He’s going to know!” 

“Nah, he won’t,” Tim says, “He’ll be to busy checking out the statements, or complaining about Diana, or complaining about the guys in Research, or complaining about Elias, or-”

“We get it, Tim,” Sasha says. “Quiet now, I think he’s coming.” 

He is, indeed, coming: Hair twisted into a low bun, immaculately dressed as always - not like Martin is looking, but, well, it’s right there, the way he rolls up his sleeves and how he has to cuff his jeans so they’re not too long - a couple of folders tucked under his right arm as he opens the door with his left hand. 

Jon stops, looks at them, and frowns; then, his eyes go wide. 

“Oh no,” he says, at the same time as Tim yells: “Happy Birthday, boss!” 

“You’re not allowed to gift me things, it says so in the-” Jon starts, but is quickly interrupted by Sasha.

“Boo, Jon, don’t be like that!” she says. Tim unpacks the bottle of wine and the three of them proudly present it to Jon, who looks like all he wants is for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.  
“Fine,” he says, takes the bottle, then scowls at all of them, “But no one sings the stupid happy birthday song or I’ll fire all of you.” 

“Sure,” Tim says, but Martin sees that he has his fingers crossed behind his back. He rolls his eyes. 

“Thanks,” Jon says, and eyes the bottle. “And thanks for this as well.” 

“We’re not sure what you like,” Sasha says, “So we just got you this on a whim.” 

“Christ, Sasha, he doesn’t need to know that!” Tim complains. 

Jon smiles. It’s the smile he usually reserves for when Martin brings him his cup of tea: Small, private, and full of fondness. There is a mischievous glint in his eyes, however, and for a second Martin could swear that he knows that this bottle of wine is just a decoy, but then it’s gone, and Jon thanks them again and disappears into his office to do some work. 

“Can’t believe he’s actually working on his birthday,” Tim says, shaking his head. 

“Well, what is he supposed to do? Just not show up?” Sasha asks. She’s rummaging around in the cabinet they stored all the party supplies in, taking out the party hats and passing them around. 

“I can tell you right now that I will call in sick on my birthday,” Tim announces, picking out a pink hat with gold tinsel trim that clashes terribly with his red shirt. 

“More like call in drunk, huh?” Sasha says and puts her own green party hat on. Martin gets a yellow one, which is fun, but Sasha also drapes a paper garland around his neck like an oversized necklace, which is less fun. 

“Exactly! Hey, can I have one of those?” Tim receives his own garland from Sasha and weaves it around his shoulders like it’s one of those hideous feather boas and he’s a 1920s show girl. Then, checking if the door to Jon’s office is closed all the way, he leans in and whispers: “Do you guys think he bought it? The decoy, I mean.“

“Why wouldn’t he?” Sasha shrugs. “It’s not like he can read minds, or has x-ray vision, or something.” 

“Careful!” Martin hisses. Tim is balancing the cake on one hand and it’s not going well. It seriously looks like he’s going to drop it, but Tim just shushes Martin and continues one-handedly digging in his pocket for the box of matches he has put there earlier. Sasha silently counts down - one, two, three! - and they open the door and yell: “Surprise!” 

Jon looks up from his statement, not in the least surprised. He smiles as they file into his office and Sasha blows one of those stupid party horns, hands folded on his desk and waiting patiently for them to get their bearings, as if he was the one to surprise them and not the other way around.

“Aww, he didn’t even spill his tea,” Tim complains, looking a little disappointed. “Well, Happy Birthday, boss.” 

“You already told me that, earlier. Have you forgotten?” Jon says. 

“I haven’t! Wait - Martin, did you snitch?” 

“No! What? No, I didn’t, why -” 

“Well, how else could he have known?” Tim pouts a bit. 

“It wasn’t that hard, Tim,” Jon says and helps Tim put the cake down onto his desk, “You just aren’t quite as sneaky as you think you are.” 

“Well, surprise officially ruined, boss.” 

“It’s not _ruined_ , Tim,” Jon rolls his eyes, but he smiles. “In fact, this is all very touching. Thank you.” 

There’s a soft knock on the door. Jon’s smile disappears in an instant. Martin and Sasha share a look.

The door opens to reveal Elias, holding a tiny, neatly wrapped gift, looking sheepishly into the room, and as soon as he takes his first step over the threshold, hundreds of plasticy clicks sound off as tape recorders all across the room turn on simultaneously. Martin looks around for whatever set them off, but he knows - oh, he knows, this is something else, something _real_ , something dangerous. A shiver runs down his spine and he knows that Sasha and Tim feel it too, feel a hostile power seeping into the room, swirling all around them and filling it with _fear_.

“Leave,” Jon says, hands shaking with rage. 

“Now, Archivist, I’ve just come to deliver my gift,” Elias says. He reaches out, a smug smile on his face and the little box in the palm of his hand. Jon hesitates, watching Elias intently, then plucks it from his hand with his fingertips, keeping as far away from Elias as possible. 

Martin holds his breath, waiting for something, anything, to happen. It doesn’t. Elias and Jon just stare at each other, neither man blinking, until Tim shakes the box of matches in his hand and nervously asks: “Who wants cake?” 

When Elias has left, they all still hold their plates of uneaten cake to at least have something to do, the tape recorders click off slowly, one by one. 

“What the fuck …” Sasha whispers under her breath, and Jon closes his eyes, looking like he’s just finished running a marathon. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, eyes still closed.

“You really hate him, huh?” Sasha says, quietly. Tim takes a bite of cake, very pointedly not looking at Jon. 

Jon doesn’t answer, only stares at his slice of cake like it holds the secret to the universe. 

Martin sits, quietly, brain empty of any thoughts, except the memory of the clicking as all those recorders turned on at the same time. He hadn’t even known that they had so many. It was a threat, he’s sure of that, but who was being threatened here? Was it Jon threatening Elias, for entering his domain without permission, or was Elias threatening Jon, for some reason unknown to Martin? Or was it all just a stupid coincidence, a weird technical malfunction that just happened to occur the exact moment of two personalities clashing? No. You don’t work at the Magnus Institute without believing in the supernatural, and whatever happened today clearly wasn’t normal, Martin is sure of it. Sasha seems to have come to the same conclusion, eyeing the tape recorder closest to her as if it could come to life at any moment (and who knows, it might as well do exactly that) and tapping her foot repeatedly on the ground in an effort to dispel her nervousness. 

“It’s … complicated,” Jon finally says. Tim snorts. “I promise I will explain. Eventually. I’m not … I’m not quite ready for that conversation just yet. But you deserve to know. And you will.” 

“We’re holding you to that, Jon,” Sasha says. 

“You should,” Jon says, his eyes fixed on Sasha. 

Something is … shifting. Martin can feel it, can feel the anticipation permeating the air. He wants to _know_ , desperately, but he also doesn’t want to push Jon too much, not while he looks like he might start crying any moment. 

“... Some birthday surprise, huh?” Tim says, smiling weakly. 

“I still appreciate it,” Jon says, “The cake is great.” 

“You haven’t even tried it, Jon!” Sasha complains, and suddenly they’re all laughing again, tension leaving the room in a rush. Jon takes a very elaborate bite of his cake. The gift Elias gave him still sits unwrapped on a stack of files. 

* * *

Time flies. 

Jon takes the statement of Angie Santos regarding the website her friend is building personally this time and considers giving Annabelle Cane a call just to mess with her a little bit, but in the end he decides against it, as it would be a very Web thing to do and Jon has no inclination to further feed it by manipulating people. It’s just not in his nature.

Every day, he checks the newspaper for obituaries; when Lydia Halligan’s name finally appears, though later than last time, he feels like he has failed. Michael never came to talk to him, and he wonders if Lydia even followed his instructions. Maybe she was too scared to push back, maybe she was too tired. Maybe she stammered out the words he told her to say and Michael just laughed that devastating laugh of his, completely ignoring what she said. He’s trying to avoid knowing it, but of course that doesn’t work: The Eye pushes the knowledge into his mind, and he knows that she was never given the chance to even try. He’s severely depressed for a week after that and actually calls in sick; Lydia never appears in his dreams again. It’s not like he misses her part of his dream, and maybe her death was inevitable, but he had promised to save as many as he could. This is his first _real_ failure; he didn’t try all that hard to save Gertrude, but he did very much try to save Lydia. When he comes back to the Archives, dark rings underneath his eyes and wearing wrinkled clothing, Martin gives him a look, a cup of tea, and a warm squeeze to his shoulder. Jon has to stop himself from saying: “I love you.” It should be getting easier; he should be getting used to the fact that Martin is no longer his boyfriend. Instead, it’s getting increasingly harder. Sometimes he curls up in a corner of the Archives when he knows his assistants are busy and spends an hour or two crying. It never helps.

It’s freezing cold; December comes and goes. Tim wears a headband decorated with antlers and bells for the entire month that jingles every time he moves his head and threatens to drive Sasha insane, combined with a sweater that actually lights up when Tim presses a button close to his armpit. Jon watches as his assistants bicker and fight and make up again, he watches as they exchange little Christmas gifts, and he watches as Martin puts up a little fake Christmas tree using a stack of boxes to elevate it and decorates it with a paper star folded from one of the discredited statements. 

He knows when Helen opens a door that appears out of nowhere and steps inside the corridors. Yet another failure to chalk up to inevitability. Yet another devastating blow to his goal. But at least for Helen, there is still time to save here; the possibility is still there. Last time, she survived for months before Elias put her in that taxi, before she made her statement and then was ripped from this world. 

The date has been marked on his calendar since he first set foot into this timeline: The 13th of January, 2016. It’s circled in red, and it has her initials neatly noted next to the date. N.H. Naomi Herne. The first dream. His first victim. The one who had to suffer the most, and the longest, under his never-ending gaze, his ceaseless watching, and the one who he’s most sorry about. Every night, she walked through the graveyard once more, screaming and crying for help that he could not give, to be released from this terror. Every night, he watched her as she broke down again and again and again, as she realized that even though there was a thing made of eyes watching her, she was utterly and absolutely alone and would always be. And not only did he cause her these endless nightmares, he was also horrible to her in person. After walking through that door, making it up to her has always been very high on his list of things to do now that he has the opportunity to. 

Tim escorts her down. She’s wearing a black coat so long it almost touches the ground, a dark blue blouse and a pencil skirt that looks way too cold for January. Her hair is short and blond and brushes her chin every time she takes a shy step into the Archives. She looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks. 

It’s all so painfully familiar that Jon’s heart threatens to stop beating; he remembers her walking in, he remembers being annoyed at something and being rude to her, remembers recording her statement and realizing that the recording didn’t work. He’d chalked it up to some weird technological defect back then, and had asked her to tell her story again, which annoyed them both, and in the end, when all she wanted was to be told that what she saw was real, he blew her off. He played his usual sceptic act, only concerned with himself, not thinking about how his words could hurt people. He’d felt bad, of course, but not as much as he should have. If Jon could kick his past self right now, he would, with pleasure. 

“You okay?” Tim asks quietly as he guides Naomi into Jon’s office. Jon can’t muster the strength to speak, so he just nods, eyes focused on Naomi. She’s tiny, sitting in the visitor’s chair, shoulders dropping and head bent downwards, playing with the engagement ring that she still wears even though Evan has now been dead for an entire year. Jon understands. He hadn’t, back when she first came to him; hadn’t understood why she wouldn’t just move on and find someone else. Now, he sees her and remembers Martin. He recalls soft kisses in a cabin in Scotland just before the world went wrong. He remembers holding hands as they walked through the apocalypse. He misses the fingers running through his hair every time they had a moment’s respite. 

He sits. There’s a tape recorder already sitting on the table, waiting to be turned on, which he does.

“That thing looks like it’s at least thirty years old,” Naomi says. Her voice is quiet, melancholic. 

“Unfortunately, we are severely underfunded and therefore have a lot of problems with our technology,” Jon says and gives her an apologetic smile. 

“Hm. You actually want me to tell my story to that piece of junk, though? No wonder no one takes you guys seriously.” She stares at the tape recorder as if it had personally offended her. 

Jon chooses to ignore that comment, this time: “Would you mind stating your name, the date, and the subject of your statement?” 

“Sure, I guess. My name is Naomi Herne, and I’m here to make a statement about …”   
He can’t do this. Not again.

“Stop, please, Ms. Herne,” he says.

She does. He turns off the tape recorder.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice breaking. “I already know what happened to you. I won’t make you go through it again, just so I can have it on tape.” 

“I don’t understand -” she says, but he doesn’t let her speak.

“I know that you were lonely all your life, that you always preferred loneliness to companionship, until you met Evan Lukas. I know that Evan died of a hereditary heart condition before you two could get married. I know that you went to his funeral at the Lukas family estate and that you got lost in the fog, utterly alone, until you heard Evan’s voice telling you to turn left, which you did. And then you got hit by a car and woke up in the hospital. Did I get that right?” 

“Yes,” she says, her eyes enormous, staring at him, “But how?” 

Jon takes a deep breath. Then another. He needs to tell someone, needs to get it all out, and this is truly not the time, but he has this need inside himself to let her know at least parts of the truth, to assure her that what she saw was real and that she is not crazy. So he takes another deep breath, and he looks her straight in the eye, and says: “Because you told me once before.” 

“What does that mean -”

“It’s not important. I know your story, and I want you to know that it was real, and that you survived a very dangerous situation.” 

She just stares at him. God, he had forgotten just how strong she was, to walk in the Lonely and pull herself out of it, just by anchoring herself to her dead fiance and the hatred she felt for his despicable family. All Jon wants to have is that strength. 

“What happened to me?” she asks, and there are tears shimmering in her eyes.

“Your fiance’s family serves a powerful entity, a being that I can only describe as a god, but much more … distant. They don’t exist in this world, but they want to. They feed on our fear, and they are our fear, so they have servants who act in their stead. The Lukases are such servants.” 

“So … They were trying to feed me to some sort of fear god … What kind of fear?” She’s trembling. 

“Can’t you guess?” Laughter is bubbling up inside of him. It’s desperation and self-hatred and loneliness all mixed together and it threatens to spill out right then and there, but he forces himself to keep it in, to not alienate Naomi further. He owes her that much.

“I .. I really can’t …,” she says. 

“Loneliness, Naomi. The Entity is called the Lonely, and the Lukas family has served it for generations.” 

She’s silent for a long time. Finally, she looks up at him, and says, “Evan would never do that. He wouldn’t serve this … Entity.” Jon sighs. Does he really need to tell her this? 

“That’s why he left. He told you he didn’t have a lot of contact with them, right?” 

“... Right.” 

“Because they were ‘religious’. Evan wasn’t suited to the Lonely at all. It happens. So he got out, at least for a little while.” 

“So he made the right choice?” 

“As far as I’m concerned, yes.” 

They sit, together, in silence. Then: “Did he …” 

He Knows what she’s trying to say, can see it the moment she thinks of it. Did Evan only love her because of her inclination to loneliness? Did he, maybe unconsciously, use her to feed his god? 

“No,” he says, and it’s true, he knows it, “He loved you. He really, truly, loved you.” 

“How do you know?” she asks. There’s desperation coloring her voice, and his heart breaks. He’s just trying to make it better but instead he’s making it worse. 

At least she won’t dream of the graveyard anymore. 

“Because I am also a monster. I serve the Eye. It’s … the fear of being known.” 

“So you just know things? Randomly?” 

“Basically, yes.” 

She snorts. “That sucks,” she says.

“Yes,” he answers, breathlessly, “It does.” 

She leaves the piece of the gravestone she broke off while lost in the Lonely with him, as before, and he puts it in a box for Artefact Storage to come and pick it up; he’s got no intention of letting a piece of the Lonely get anywhere close to Martin. 

Before Naomi leaves, she gives him a hug, and he returns it after a moment’s hesitation.

“You lost someone, too,” she says just before she leaves, and he just manages a short nod. 

She strokes his cheek, then gives him a little pat on the shoulder. 

“Everyone who says it gets better is lying,” she says, “But you learn to live with it.” 

“Goodbye, Naomi,” he says instead of answering. “Call me if you need anything.” They’d exchanged numbers, after she said that she doesn’t have anyone to even text these days, and while Jon is certainly not a tech person, he can manage the occasional text message if it means saving another soul from the Lonely. 

“I will,” she says, and he knows that she really does mean it. 

She gives a little wave as she leaves, then walks up the stairs towards the exit with her head held high. The colors around her seem brighter than they were before, which Jon decides to take as a good sign. He feels better, too: Lighter, and there’s a certain, simple sense of relief that floods through him. There is, of course, the fact that he hasn’t actually gotten a statement from her this time around and that he will need to get the … nourishment it would have given him from someone else, but the weight that has been lifted from his soul at the thought of never having to walk through her nightmarish landscape again is worth it. She deserves whatever little bit of peace he can give her. 

After she is gone, safely seated in a taxi heading towards her apartment, Martin brings Jon tea. It’s strong, black tea with no sugar and just a splash of milk; exactly how Jon likes it. 

The longing to kiss Martin, to hold him in his arms, carves his soul up into pieces. Sometimes, he thinks he’s back in the Lonely, yelling for Martin to come to him, to find him in this endless nothingness, and then he’s back, sitting in his office, sipping tea, recording statements, as if nothing had ever happened. The disconnect concerns him. 

He sits and sips his tea, and thinks about Naomi, her suffering, the way she walked through the fog and came out changed but still strong. He admires her, and he wishes her nothing but good things happening in her life from now on.

Jon has never understood the way Elias would sometimes just … be distracted. His power of knowing feels all-consuming, always there, ceaseless and incessant. But as he sits there, drinking the tea Martin has made for him, and thinks about the world and his love for Martin and the conversation with Naomi, Jon does not notice that Sasha has been watching this entire time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAG 161 said Jon's birthday party and I said: yes, of course, thank you
> 
> While editing, all I could think about is how much I want to dress like Tim ...
> 
> As always, thank you for all the comments and kudos and bookmarks, I appreciate every single one of them <3


	5. we reach for the stars and fall short

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A siege and a storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: spiders, worms (lots), general Jane-Prentiss-ness
> 
> A few lines of statements taken from MAG 32 and MAG 22.

Spiders are cute. They’re adorable! The big ones are fuzzy sometimes, and the small ones that sit in the corners of his room and spend their days spinning webs and catching flies never did _him_ any harm. So, yeah, Martin doesn’t mind spiders. Not at all, actually. 

What he _does_ mind is that statement he’s currently researching. Carlos Vittery. Kills a ghost spider, owns a cat, and turns up dead in his bed, choked by spider webs. That’s disgusting, that’s unnerving, and Martin doesn’t like it one bit. So, when he starts looking further into it, he asks Sasha and Tim for help, but Sasha is busy looking into some guy who calls himself the Boneturner and Tim … well, Tim doesn’t really offer a reason, but he says he’s busy, so Martin has no choice but to go to Vittery’s former apartment building on his own. 

He finds it easy enough; it looks just like described in the statement. A testament to the merits of concrete and steel, a symphony of brutalism, the epitome of cityscape ugliness, surrounded by sidewalks and driveways and no greenery anywhere in sight except for a couple of window boxes filled with dead petunias. It’s positively depressing, and Martin is suddenly very glad he doesn’t live here. 

The sun is just barely rising over the buildings of Archway, the air cold and humid; it rained the night before, and some of the moisture still hangs over the city like a heavy cloud that could burst at any moment. 

A large door of thick, heavy wood separates the inside of the building from the outside. When Martin tries to open it, it’s locked, which unfortunately makes sense for a front door, so he takes a look at the doorbells and buzzes them all one by one. No one answers, which is fair, because it is very early in the morning and they’re probably all at work, just like he is, so he turns away from the door with a sigh and looks around to find something he can snoop around in. 

Going back to the Archives isn’t really an option. Martin hasn’t talked to Jon about the Vittery statement yet, but he knows that Jon will be disappointed in him if he just shows up with nothing to show for it. Jon is always pushing his assistants to be better, to question things, to go past the obvious and easy answers and find out the truth. If Martin gives up because no one will open a door for him, Jon will not be happy. And all Martin wants is for Jon to be happy.

Martin allows himself two minutes to think about Jon: About his secret smiles reserved just for Martin, about the way the shorter strands of his hair close to his face sometimes slip out of Jon’s ponytail and come loose, just waiting for someone to run their fingers through them, about how his glasses sometimes slip off his nose when he forgets to push them up regularly. Martin has made peace with the fact that what used to be a little crush he had on the cute guy in Research has grown into a big old infatuation with the man, who is now his boss, which … isn’t an ideal situation, but it’s fine, as long as Martin keeps his mouth shut and his open admiration of Jon’s gorgeous brown eyes to a minimum. It’s worked so far, even if Sasha gives him some very pointed looks sometimes, because Jon seems to be utterly oblivious to Martin’s affection. Martin sighs. It’s probably for the best. Workplace romances, and all that. Not always the smartest choice.

His gaze sweeping across the building, Martin spots an open window close to the ground, probably leading into the basement. Perfect.

Why people leave their basement windows ajar, Martin doesn’t really understand, and never did, but it seems to be a recurring theme in these houses he’s investigating, and he’s squeezed through more than enough of them. Certainly, he’s encountered enough basement windows to immediately know that this one will be a particular pain to get through, so he isn’t exactly eager to get close to it. But he does, because it’s his _job_ , and because if he doesn’t Jon will give him that _look_ again, and he doesn’t want that. 

There’s something on the ground next to the window, glinting in the meager sunlight making its way through the clouds, small and thin and long. He thinks it’s maybe a piece of metal, but as he gets closer, he notices that it’s moving, writhing, twitching; it’s about an inch long and thin, silvery-white, with one end blackened as though it’s been burned. A worm. 

Spiders are cute, worms are decidedly not. Still, the thing looks unnatural enough that Martin’s interest is piqued, and he vaguely remembers that Vittery mentioned a worm infestation in his statement that the spiders might be feeding on, so he kneels down next to it to inspect it further, and immediately stumbles back when the worm thing moves it’s blackened head to … look him directly in the eye. That’s not normal worm behavior, so Martin stumbles back, letting out a small scream, and gets up as quickly as he can to stomp on the worm. It bursts open and oozes out black goo, which is _disgusting_ , and there isn’t even a patch of lawn around where he could wipe it off on, so he’s just going to have to live with having a worm-contaminated shoe.

“Ugh, gross,” he says and tries to scrape at least some of it off on the sidewalk, which only works a little bit, but at least it makes him feel a little bit better than before. Checking around for more worms, he is relieved that he doesn’t see any, but he’s still wary, looking at the ground the entire rest of the way to the window. 

The window itself is a daunting affair; Martin is not fond of being stuck in windows, and the fact that this one faces the street, where any passerby could see him breaking and entering in probably the most undignified way there is, doesn’t exactly reassure him. Still, he makes it through without too many problems and lands on his feet in the basement. 

It’s dark down here, very dark; the light from the window doesn’t reach very far, so Martin keeps his left hand close to the wall to guide himself. The basement itself seems very large, almost uncharacteristically so, but then, London architecture can get weird sometimes, so Martin is not too concerned about that. What he _is_ concerned about is the terrible smell that permeates the air, musty and heavy and almost … rotten. 

Martin decides he does not like how the basement makes him feel. It looks like there’s a stairway just a bit further down the hall, leading upwards, and he makes up his mind to return to the basement later, hopefully with a flashlight or some other light source, and if he can’t find one, well, then he just won’t come back. 

The door at the top of the stairs thankfully isn’t locked and swings open easily, and Martin finds himself in a bare hallway lit with bright white neon lights, a welcome sight after the oppressive dark of the basement. 

He remembers that Carlos Vittery had lived on the second floor, so he walks up yet another flight of stairs and arrives slightly out of breath on the landing. There’s only one door that leads to an apartment, the other is some kind of office, so he knocks at the door and waits patiently. 

In detective movies, they often say that stakeouts are mostly waiting. Martin has found that it’s the same with researching supernatural statements. 

“And you didn’t find anything?” Jon asks, looking up expectedly and slightly disappointed at Martin. Damn, this is what he didn’t want to happen.

“No, just an old lady who didn’t really speak English and the landlord who didn’t even know that Mr. Vittery had died, so … no, I didn’t find anything.” 

“Hm.” Jon takes a slow, deliberate sip of his tea. “Unfortunate, but if that’s the way it is, then I don’t think we can do much about it.” 

“Sorry,” Martin says, but Jon shakes his head. 

“No, it’s fine,” he says. “There’s nothing more we can do for Mr. Vittery, unfortunately. He won’t care about what we find.” 

“True,” Martin says, “So it’s okay if I start working on a different statement? Sasha said she needed some help with the Boneturner thing …” 

Jon grimaces.   
“Nasty one,” he says under his breath, then, louder: “Sure, go ahead, Martin. Whatever you think is best.” 

Whatever you think is best, Martin. What a great thing to say, Jon! 

Because Martin, as he goes on his merry way home, thinks it best to have a mini-breakdown over the fact that he disappointed Jon, because he must have been disappointed, there’s no way he wasn’t disappointed, so he spends his entire ride on the Underground agonizing over Carlos Vittery and his stupid ghost spider, until finally, he gets up and leaves to go take another train back to Archway. 

The days are short, and darkness has already taken a deep root by the time Martin arrives back at the apartment building. The window is, blessfully, still open, and there don’t seem to be any strange worms around, so Martin goes through feet first once more, and hits the basement floor with a loud thud. The fall seems longer than earlier that day, but that’s probably just his imagination. 

This time, he’s taken his flashlight, but the steady, bright cone of light it emits does nothing to reassure him. His shadow moves … weirdly, the edges undulating, and when he shines his light source into the ceiling corners, he finds them full of large, elaborate spiderwebs. The air is full of that same musty smell.

Martin is still not afraid of spiders, but he thinks about how poor Mr. Vittery would have felt if he knew his basement was that full of them. He swings his light around a couple of times, just to check that everything was alright, when he hears … a noise. Movement, from the far side of the basement. A shuffling of feet. A squelching sound.

No matter what everyone else might think, Martin is not a coward. He actually likes to think of himself as a rather brave individual. But hearing a sound like that in a basement he’s not supposed to be in, in the middle of the night, with no means to defend himself besides his flashlight and his phone, is not the best of ideas. Still, the thought of Jon makes him go on towards the noise, one agonizingly slow step at a time. Just once, he wants to see Jon wholeheartedly impressed at the research he’s done, so he inches forward, flashlight raised high above his head, illuminating the path before him, the beam getting weaker and weaker even though he could swear that Sasha just switched out all of the batteries. The basement isn’t as empty as it seemed before; boxes and shelves litter the hallways and rooms, and for a split-second it reminds Martin of the Archives, but then it doesn’t, because the Archives are warm and familiar and safe, and this basement is rotten and strange and … spooky. 

He really should just turn around. Take his flashlight and his phone and go back to his apartment and spend a nice evening in front of the TV, maybe even opening up a box of chocolates, and then get a good night’s sleep without worrying about creepy worms and basements and spiders. 

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t turn around. 

Martin keeps his flashlight pointed forward, his head held high, and then he sees her, oh God he sees her, and he wishes he would have just ran the opposite way, but he didn’t, and now he’s here, trapped with her, and he’s so, so scared.

Knock, knock.

Martin is back in his apartment, and he slept a long time, but now he’s awake and someone is knocking on the door. 

Martin arrived, feeling just a little bit safer, in the middle of the night. The entire train ride he had continuously checked his clothing, his seat, the entire train for any sign of worms, but there were none, and he had just started to calm down a bit. His apartment was a welcome sight, small and familiar and comfortable, decorated with pictures he took, poems he framed, and trinkets he picked up and collected over the years, and he had collapsed fully clothed onto the bed and slept through the rest of the night, until he woke up in a cold sweat because he didn’t have his phone, he had dropped it back in the basement in Archway, and there was no alarm to wake him up on time for work. Then, he’d just let himself fall back onto the bed, because there was no way he’d be up for work the next day.

Now, he’s sitting upright in his bed. It’s still dark outside, the full moon shining through his window and bathing the room in a cold white light, and someone is knocking on the door. 

It’s not her. It cannot be her. He probably imagined all of it; he’s always been prone to an overactive imagination. Maybe she was just a woman who needed help, and he left her there, maybe she was homeless and had wriggled through the open window just like he did, to seek a bit of warmth and shelter, or maybe she _is_ a horrible worm spider monster woman who is knocking at his door.

Knock, knock.

Martin doesn’t own a clock; his phone has always sufficed, and he’s very meticulous about keeping it charged at all times. He has no real way of telling the time, but he’s sure that it’s not the right time for one of the neighbors asking for sugar or something. 

He reaches over to his nightstand, where he keeps a small lamp, but when he tries to click it on, nothing happens, so he thinks maybe the cable is fried or something. Only, when he gets up to try the light switch controlling the ceiling lamp, it doesn’t work, either. Neither does the light in the kitchen. And now that he’s actively listening, he can tell that the tell-tale, ubiquitous humming of the refrigerator is missing. It’s silent, utterly and incomprehensibly silent. 

Knock, knock. 

Maybe it _is_ a neighbor, asking if Martin had a power cut, too? Perhaps, a sort of neighborly affection, or to see if he has candles (which he doesn’t, except for a few tealights he actually does use to keep his tea warm), or to ask for a box of matches or a lighter? Maybe he’s just being paranoid, and there’s really nothing to worry about, and he can use this as a fun story to make the team laugh in a couple of days. 

Knock, knock. 

He doesn’t open the door. He makes it there, shuffling around, about to turn the doorknob and see what’s out there, but he looks down before his fingers actually touch the cold metal. 

It’s a worm. Silvery-white, black on one end, as if it was burned. 

He screams. 

* * *

Jon feels terrible about the whole situation, he really, really does. But he’s so scared of whatever Elias can cook up instead of Jane Prentiss, Corruption-wise, and he really can’t see another way. So he’s sitting there in his office, and knows when Martin changes his mind and goes to the basement, and he knows when he sees Jane and flees from her, and he knows when he is woken up in the middle of the night to knocking at the door, and he knows when Martin is done barricading himself in his tiny apartment. 

A text arrives, at 8am on the dot, from Martin: “Hey Jon, I’m pretty sick. I think I have a stomach bug. I’ll stay home for a couple of days, if that’s ok?” 

Jon doesn’t respond. No need. 

Instead, he thinks, and stews in self-hatred, and pretends to be terribly busy working when Tim comes in and asks him where Martin is. 

There’s this … deep, lingering fear: Martin, deciding this time that loving Jon is not worth it, that he is better off with someone else. It’s real, it’s there, and yet Jon can’t help but think that it would be okay, that as long as Martin is happy and safe, he’s done his job and he’s done it well. Jon can suffer heart-break if it means happiness for Martin. 

But there’s another one; and thousands more: What if it’s all inevitable? What if Sasha will die, and then Tim, and then the world will end, and Jon can’t do anything to stop it? What if there is always another tragedy, and if they weather one, there is another one just waiting, around the corner? What if saving Gerry means someone else will die in his stead, because now there is one life too many in this world? 

What if it’s all for nothing? 

No. There has to be a way to change things. 

Jon gets up, walks out of the room in a flurry of limbs and fabric as he pulls on his jacket, and grabs the fire extinguisher from the wall just outside his office. 

“What are you doing?” Sasha asks, from her desk. Tim seems to have gone off to do research somewhere else. 

“No time to explain!” he says, louder than he meant to be. 

She runs after him, because of course she does. She’s Sasha, and she cares, and she wants to know. For a second, Jon allows himself to think of a world in which Gertrude had gotten her wish and Sasha had become the Archivist. Would she have failed, just like he did? Or would she have done everything right instead and saved the world? 

“Jon? Jon!” she yells after him. They’re running up the stairs, Sasha a few feet behind him.

“Martin’s in trouble, I’m going to help,” he tells her, not waiting for her to catch up.

“What?” She’s not even slightly out of breath. “How do you know?” 

“Just … trust me, okay?” He stops in his tracks and turns around, causing her to bump into him when she can’t stop in time. “You’d better stay here, it’s going to be dangerous.” 

“Like hell I am!” She crosses her arms. “You’re going out there, armed with what, a fire extinguisher? And you expect me to stay behind?” 

“Yes,” he says. “You’ll understand. Eventually.” 

“Oh, no, Jon, you’re not pulling the ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’ card on me!” She’s angry. He understands, he really does, but he can’t have her with him. It could interfere with her meeting with Michael, and more importantly: It would put her in danger. He thinks, fast: How can he convince her to stay? He goes through a million possibilities, all of them insufficient. 

“See if you can find Tim,” he says, eventually, “He might be in danger, too.” It’s a lie, and not a very good one, but Sasha goes white, and he Knows the thought had not occurred to her, but now that it had, it’s all she can think about. Once again, Jon wishes he could kick himself. He went back in time to make things right only to end up doing them wrong, just in a different way, maybe even making everything worse. 

“Go,” he says, and she runs past him. Good thing he Knows Tim is safe, having a very uncomfortable conversation with a butcher about one of the Flesh statements at the moment, but Sasha doesn’t know that, the thought of Tim in danger drowning out all reason and logic.

He ends up taking the train, which takes far longer than he wants. He gets a few curious stares; apparently, no one usually carries around fire extinguishers on trains, but he doesn’t mind. All he can think about is Martin, about the way he’s holed up in his apartment, scared to death. 

This is his fault. 

Jon’s never been sure if this course of action really was the best one, but the outcome is familiar, so he thought he could deal with the fallout. Last time, he had spent two weeks, blissfully unaware of the terror Martin was experiencing, and there’s really no reason for him to come to the conclusion that this time would have been the same, but it isn’t. Now that he Knows Martin’s current state of panic, he feels like kicking himself isn’t enough. He clutches the extinguisher tighter, and takes off running as soon as the train doors rattle open.

In front of Martin’s apartment building, he stops. It’s run down, the walls full of cracks, and all the windows are dark. Martin has the ground floor apartment, which Jon doesn’t need to Know, because he can clearly see that the windows are barricaded, with fabric stuffed in every nook and cranny, so that nothing can get in. The worms still try, despite those defenses, and wriggle and writhe on the window frame, crawling up the walls, trying to squeeze through any gap they can find. Still, the people hurrying past it pay no mind to the worm infestation happening right in front of their eyes; they avert their gazes, as if compelled, looking down at their feet or at their phone or to the other side of the street. They are suddenly deep in thought or terribly distracted, and of the thousands of people walking past the infestation, not a single one notices it. It’s a terrifying sort of concept, one that seems too complicated for the Corruption, and that deeply worries Jon.

So, he does the first real sensible thing that day: He calls Gerry.

Gerard Keay has a motorcycle, because of course he does. When he arrives, Jon is waiting anxiously, hands clenched so tight around the fire extinguisher that his knuckles have turned white and his fingers long since started to tingle with numbness. Gerry’s hair is growing back; the surgery scar is starkly visible through the short, black-dyed hair the way it never was when his head was shaved. He, too, is carrying a fire extinguisher, though his is covered with a thick film of dust. 

“Thank you for coming,” Jon says.

“You sounded worried,” Gerry says in response. 

“I am,” he says. He points to the window. “It’s that one.” 

“I figured,” Gerry says. He flicks a worm off the sleeve of his leather jacket, looking almost bored. “So, what’s the plan?” 

“To chase her away,” Jon says. “We don’t want to kill her. Not yet. But take as many of those damned worms with you as you can.” 

“Gotcha,” Gerry says. “And you’re sure the fire extinguishers will work?” 

Jon shrugs. 

“They did last time,” he says, taking careful steps towards the door. He lightly presses the tip of his shoe against it; it swings open almost effortlessly, but with a distinct creek. He can hear the wet squirming sounds of the worms coming from the inside. Gerry grimaces.

“After you,” he says. “And one day you’re gonna tell me what you mean by that.” 

Jon doesn’t respond. He inches forward, step after slow step, crushing worms every time he puts his foot down. He holds the extinguisher in front of himself like a shield, as if the mere sight of it could scare away the worms. 

It doesn’t. They’re here, they’re everywhere; covering the walls and the floor and the door and the ceiling like a pulsing mass, their thin silver bodies almost melting together into one big being of filth, of disgust, of Corruption. It feels all too familiar, and suddenly Jon feels as if he is back inside a body that seems too small to hold his soul, watching helplessly as the waves of worms descend upon his Archives, corrupting the statements and the bodies of himself and his assistants. He feels the phantom pain of losing Sasha, even if it was delayed; he feels guilt at his decision to make his people go through the siege again. 

“Ugh, gross,” Gerry says under his breath behind Jon, ripping him out of his thoughts of misery. “Can we kill these bastards, already?” 

Jon turns around, giving him a small, satisfied smirk. 

“Go ahead,” he says.

They go wild. 

It’s an almost intoxicating feeling: The worms, dying by the thousands, all around him. Thousands of tiny screams, coming together as one, as they fall from the walls and from the ceiling into piles on the floor. There were many thousands more at the Archives, back when they were under siege, but concentrated on a space as small as this hallway, they seem never-ending and all-consuming. 

She appears at the top of the stairs after about half of the worms have died an agonizing death. Her dress is ripped and covered in holes, and yes, Jon can see that it might have once been red and floor-length, but now it’s stiff, almost black with filth, and hanging in tatters barely past her knees. Her hair hangs down in matted waves, and he gets the sense that she might have once been a very beautiful woman indeed. She lets out a scream, a wail, and Jon is reminded of a discredited statement he once read that talked about banshees; they might as well exist, and if they do, he imagines they would look a lot like Jane Prentiss.

“Leave!” she screams, and a thousand tiny voices scream with her. 

“He is not yours,” Jon says. “Find someone else to feed you.” 

“How do you know, Archivist? Do you lay claim to him?” She sneers at him with as much of her face as she has left. A worm has eaten through her eye, its black head sticking out. Jon thinks it could be rather symbolic of the situation as a whole if it wasn’t so damn disgusting. 

“I do,” he says, and the clicking of tape recorders turning on one by one starts to drown out the worms, but this time, they’re not recording: They’re playing back. 

“ _There is a wasps’ nest in my attic_ ,” the disembodied voice of Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, sounds from every direction, coming to this world from a time both long since past and far off in the future, and: “ _It itches, and I don’t think I want it._ ” The tape recording of Jane’s statement he recorded so long ago plays over the song of the worms, and she covers what’s left of her ears with hole-covered palms, and screams, and screams, and screams. The song of the hive quiets down until it’s just the faintest whisper, barely audible over the cacophony of her own disjointed words playing back at her. 

“ _The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid._ ” Jon says the words in unison with the tape. Jane is on her knees, still screaming. The surviving worms have retreated, fleeing out of the open door in a silvery wave, eager to get away. 

“You were afraid, Jane,” Jon says, his voice as gentle as he can make it, “You didn’t want it. You were scared. Why did you give up? Why did you give _in_?”

“Make it stop,” she cries, her voice hoarse and almost inaudible. He knows, though. He knows.

“Leave,” he says. “Leave him, and I will stop. He is not yours to take.” 

“You’ll regret that,” she says, “But I will leave. Rejoice in your victory, Archivist: It will not last … long.” 

“Taking him would not have soothed your itch,” he says. There is regret there, sorrow for the life she could have led, the potential wasted. “I’m … sorry. I wish I could have helped you.” He means it. He knows she does not and will never believe him.

The tape recorders click off, just as fast as they sprung into existence.

“What the fuck,” Gerry says, from behind him. Jon flinches; he forgot Gerry was there. He turns around. 

“We, ah … we have her statement … She gave it to Gertrude,” he says. “I just … reminded her?”

“Nevermind.” Gerry shakes his head, then gestures towards Martin’s front door, still holding the fire extinguisher. “Do you want to do this alone?” 

“I … yes. If you wouldn’t mind,” Jon says. 

“I don’t,” Gerry says, “But I’m taking your cigarettes. I know you have some.” 

Jon wordlessly fishes the pack out from the same pocket he keeps the keyring in and throws it at Gerry without looking. It’s a lousy throw, hitting him in the chest and falling onto a pile of worm corpses. 

“Ew,” Gerry says, but picks up the pack anyway, careful not to touch any dead worms, then takes out one cigarette, which he puts between his lips carefully. He does not light it, but gives Jon a little mock salute before walking out into the daylight, a world away from this dark, oppressive hallway. And then he’s gone. 

Jon takes a deep breath. He doesn’t knock. Instead, he gets as close to the door as he can and yells: “Martin! It’s me, Jon! She’s gone, you can come out!” 

Nothing happens. Jon waits for five minutes, then yells again, then waits another ten, before finally knocking, even though he told himself he wouldn’t do that, considering how Jane had tormented Martin. 

Exhaustion washing over him, he puts his forehead against the painted wood of the door. He can see the fabric peeking out where Martin stuffed sweaters into the gap under the door to keep the worms out. 

The silence is deafening. He strains to listen to any sound coming from inside, but there’s nothing. For a moment, panic has his heart in a crushingly tight grip, until the Eye tells him it’s okay, Martin is fine, just hidden under the covers of his bed, wearing earplugs and humming lullabies and show tunes and radio jingles, anything at all that comes to his mind, in an attempt to silence the seemingly never-ending knocking at his door. 

“Martin!” Jon yells again, but nothing happens. 

He leaves. 

Hours later, back at his Institute, the Archivist has locked the door to his office with a key that was not made for this lock, or any lock for that matter, and yet fits perfectly, and stares at a blank sheet of paper.

There’s knowledge, just waiting to fill the page: How Martin Blackwood, after hours of hiding, steps out from under the protective weight of his blanket, pulling out the earplugs from his ears, as he takes one step, and another, and another, towards his kitchen to open up a microwavable dinner he plans to eat cold. How he doesn’t notice just how silent it is, until the silence is broken once more by an angry knock at the door, completely different from the rhythmic knocking of one Jane Prentiss, and yet it makes Martin flinch and cower, until it is joined by angry yelling in a voice that he clearly recognizes as belonging to his landlord, screaming and clamoring about dead worms and cut wires. 

The Archivist knows how Martin bundles up in whatever clothes he hasn’t used to protect himself from worms: A sweater, worn for three days straight; a pair of jeans, slightly too small; a pair of socks, a hole on the right heel, already darned twice. He knows when Martin takes his first tentative steps into the dying daylight of the late afternoon, how his foot crushes hundreds of dead worms and one single unsmoked cigarette as he walks through the hallway. He knows when Martin runs back into his apartment to pick up one of the empty jars he has, one that once stored pasta sauce, and scoops some of the dead worms inside to take to the Institute as grim proof of what has happened to him these past few days. He knows when Martin inhales the crisp, cold air of the outside and starts to make his way to the Institute. 

The pen does not move. The Archivist cannot write. It’s like the words have left him, flown out of his mind, overwritten by a statement already given. He remembers it, every last word uttered by his assistant: How he had encountered her, how he had escaped her, how he had hidden from her for thirteen days. The worms had been alive, back then. The Archivist can still hear the squelching sounds as they moved, leaving behind trails of mucus on the glass walls of the jar that was to be their final prison. 

The Archivist puts the pen down on the paper, a single dot of ink; but he does not write. A single tape recorder moves into existence next to the Archivist’s elbow, static filling the air as it starts to play: _“I think I might have… lost my mind a bit, then. It all… feels very… strange, blurry. I-I remember stamping and stamping as-as more made their way under my doorway_.” 

“Stop it,” the Archivist says, and the tape recorder obeys. He sighs. “That’s … new.” 

It’s new, it’s unnerving, it’s troubling. The Archivist never believed he truly left his timeline behind; the memories remained, of course, and so did the trauma. Lydia Halligan had given a statement that was familiar, but slightly different, giving him something new he hadn’t known before; he had not given Naomi Herne a chance to give a statement, but he thinks it might have been the same with her, a story mostly the same and yet disparate, different details stepping into the spotlight as others fade away to make room. Now, the statements start bleeding over, poisoning the new memories being made, weaving together the old string of fate with the new. 

Is it all inevitable? Has this … newness … been an illusion of hope? 

The Archivist lets out a frustrated scream, throws the tape recorder down, and crushes it under his heel. It’s empty: There’s neither tape nor batteries. Just an empty shell of a thing, just like the Archivist himself. 

The door opens. It should not have been possible; the Archivist clearly remembers locking it, but it opens, as if it had never been locked at all. It’s Sasha James, Assistant Archivist, her long hair tangled at the ends, her clothes rumpled and in disarray. She’s angry, and she’s angry at the Archivist. 

“Jon,” she says, “I’ve had enough.” 

She closes the door behind her. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally done with my exams, so I have two months of free time to write ... I'll let you guys know how it goes <3


	6. was it a vision, or a waking dream?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A statement, and another, wrapped up in change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: death, loss of identity, minor injuries, worms, loss
> 
> General plot of the second statement taken from MAG 26.

The scene is set. 

Sasha James is standing, back to the closed door, arms crossed in front of her. She’s angry. Furious.

Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, is sitting in his chair, a look of surprise and shock on his face. He is uncomfortable and worries about what is coming. Does he tell her? He had promised to let them in, eventually; it’s just that this is very, very early to reveal his past to them. He’d always imagined he’d gather all of his friends and colleagues around him, sit them all down at the same time, and talk uninterrupted for an hour. They’d accept his story without questions, there would be exclamations of ‘it makes so much sense!’ and they would all leave the room knowing exactly what to do and feeling optimistic about the future.

It seems that even a monster isn’t immune to having hopeful fantasies. 

Instead, Sasha has him cornered in his office, and he knows she is not going to back down, not this time. On purpose he had led her astray to postpone this conversation, and she will not let him get away with that. Oh no, she’s too smart for that. And all this hope, all this dreaming, the endless hours spent thinking and strategizing and plotting, they were wasted time, because the future is impossible to predict even if you’ve already lived through it once. If a single butterfly flapping its wings can change the future, so can a misplaced word or a decision made differently. He’s been an idiot, and if he wasn’t an Avatar of the Eye, he would say he’s been blind, too. 

“Start talking, Sims,” Sasha says. She’s taller than him, and is standing while he is still seated, and she’s using that to her full advantage.  _ I’m unforgettable _ , she’d said on one of the recordings he’d received after the apocalypse, one he’d replayed over and over and over, and yet he had forgotten her, had forgotten just how determined and methodical she was, and that she would not back down from a fight. He’d forgotten to not underestimate her. 

“It’s … I’m -” He’s stalling, playing for time, desperately trying to think of something to say. 

“Cut the bullshit,” she says, getting closer. “You’re going to tell me everything, right now, no shortcuts.”

Jon sighs and puts down the pen, movements slow and measured. When he’s done, he folds his hands on his desk and looks up to Sasha.

“What do you want to know, exactly?” he asks. 

“Why did you send me after Tim? You knew he was fine, didn’t you?” 

“I did,” he says, and she looks ready to murder him with the paperweight he has sitting on his desk. She’d probably get away with it, too. “I knew that the thing that besieged Martin was very dangerous, and I wanted you out of harm’s way.” She snorts at that, and shakes her head in disbelief.

“So you call your goth friend instead? What, is he so much better at fighting supernatural worms than I am?” 

“Wait … How do you know about Gerry?” This isn’t right. No, this can’t be right. 

“Martin told me about the …” 

“Yes,” Jon says, and gets up. She … no. “He told you about the worms, and about Prentiss, but he didn’t know Gerry was there. He didn’t even know I was there! So how did  _ you _ know?” 

Sasha looks down. Then up again, straight into his eyes. Neither of them blink. 

“I just knew,” she says, finally. “That’s not the point!” 

“No,” he interrupts. “This is important, Sasha.” 

“Well, so is you finally telling me what’s going on! You’re just trying to change the subject!” She’s yelling now. Good thing he put Martin into the one room in the Archives that is actually soundproof, so unless he’s out making tea, he won’t hear them fighting. Martin barging in here and demanding to know the truth as well would probably be too much for Jon to handle, and he really doesn’t want another mental breakdown right now. 

“I’m really not,” he says, “I’m just worried about you.” 

“Why! Why are you worried about me, John, why do you -” 

“Because you died! You died, and it was my fault, and I didn’t do anything to stop it, I didn’t even fucking notice!” 

She’s silent. So is he. A shocked breath, a skipped heartbeat. A minute passes, then another. He didn’t mean to yell at her like that. There he goes once more, ruining everything and burning every bridge. 

“What does that mean?” she finally asks, voice quiet and breathy. 

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s just … really hard,” he says. 

Static fills the room, loud, until all he hears is the deafening rush of tape running and blood flowing. 

And then he knows what to do.

“Sit down, please, Sasha,” he tells her. When she does, he picks up the pen again. A tape recorder clicks on, startling Sasha. 

“Where did that thing come from?” she asks. 

“I actually don’t really know,” he says, and notes her name down on a piece of paper. Somewhere, a butterfly is flapping its wings, and Sasha James is going to give a statement, before having met Michael, before having survived what would have been her death, before Jon even had a chance to save her. This might ruin everything, or it might fix things. Heaven or Hell, only an arm’s length away.

“Statement of Sasha James, Assistant Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding her own death in a different timeline. Statement taken direct from subject, 2nd of March, 2015, during the second attempt. Statement begins.” 

She looks at him, eyes huge behind her round glasses, and just stares for a moment, before opening her mouth; at first, no sound comes out, but then she blinks once, twice, and the words start flowing, compulsion pulling them out of her.

“I … I … The table ... It was there. I was there, and I was scared, and it was there, and I saw it, and I saw something moving …

“... How would a melody describe itself if asked? That’s what Michael said to me, when I asked what he was, and I didn’t understand it then. I should’ve, after all the work I’ve done in Artefact Storage. I talk about how much I hated it there all the time, but the truth is that it wasn’t just hatred and contempt, it was fear. I was scared of the Leitners, I was scared of the furniture, I was scared shitless of that one stupid glass eye that turned to look at you, the haunted dolls that were actually haunted and even of the ones that weren’t, the shop mannequin that had killed someone, or the bag of grave dirt that never actually did anything, but it was there, so it must have been something terrible.

“So yeah, I hated Artefact Storage. Transferring out of there to Research felt like a blessing. I was thinking of quitting, before, but Research was fun. It was great. I had purpose, and great people around me, and then I was transferred again to the Archives, and I was angry. Angry that I was overlooked, that you got the job of Head Archivist instead of me. I chalked it up to misogyny, I think. Who knows. But watching you flail around, clearly not having the first clue about what an archivist actually does, well, it wasn’t exactly fun. 

“And then the worms came, and I met Michael. How does a melody describe itself? But I wasn’t scared. I felt brave. I mean, taken as a whole it was probably a very scary situation, and Michael himself was unsettling, and the worms were disgusting, and I was worried about Prentiss, but I wasn’t … scared. 

“Of course, when the Infestation actually rolled through the Archives, trapping us and hunting us and hurting us, everything changed. A whole ocean of worms, out there to kill us in the most gruesome way possible. Hunting us, chasing us through the Institute. For me to end up in Artefact Storage, taking shelter there, well, it felt like fate, but also like a slap in the face. Here you are, in a place that caused you so much suffering. Had I known I was about to die, though … I don’t know what I would have done. 

“How would a melody describe itself? How can I explain the thing I saw? I was actually amused at seeing the table, like, oh, it’s the thing Jon is so obsessed with, I’m going to use that opportunity to make fun of him! And then I saw movement. I saw … something. 

“In school, they taught us about black holes. Of course, I knew that they exist, that what the teachers told us was true, but it was always so difficult for me to imagine them. They seemed so impossible, the exact opposite of  _ real _ . That is exactly what the … thing … in Artefact Storage looked like. I … can’t describe it. It was an absence of identity, made into a physical form. If you take someone and you strip away everything that makes them a person, and then take away even more, until they’re just a faceless void that doesn’t have a name or feeling of self or … Well. That’s what it looked like. And I saw it, and it saw me. And in that moment I realized that in all those years that I was scared of Artifact Storage or the dark or heights or spiders, I never really knew what fear felt like. 

“I was so scared, Jon. And then it hurt. It hurt … so much …” Sasha starts crying as the compulsion lets go of her, tears streaming down her face in an endless flood. 

“Statement ends,” Jon says. His own cheeks are wet, too.

“Oh God, Jon,” she says in-between sobs, “I remember. I remember everything.” 

“Tell me,” he says, and reaches out across the table to take her hand.

“The worms, and Prentiss, and Michael, and the thing …” She’s shaking. Jon grips her hand tighter, not letting go. “What was it? Do you know?”

“I … It’s called the Not-Them … It takes over its victims’ lives. Not their appearance, just … it overwrites memories, distorts reality … Most people don’t notice that it’s actually an imposter. They just think the person always looked like that, behaved like that, spoke like that. And when they look at pictures of the person, they show the imposter instead.”

“So … that’s what you meant when you said you didn’t notice that I died?” 

“Yes. There’s always one person who remembers the victim as they were before, but it … wasn’t me. I didn’t notice anything about the Not-Sasha,” he says, and hands her a handkerchief. 

“Who was it?” she asks, “Who remembered me?” 

“Uh.” Jon doesn’t really know what to say to that. “You know Melanie King? The, ah, host of Ghost Hunt UK?” Sasha is so surprised that she stops crying, which is a good thing, probably, maybe, maybe not.

“A random youtuber? Seriously?” She sounds a little offended. 

They sit in silence for a while. Jon plays around with his pen, while Sasha occasionally sniffles into her handkerchief. 

Finally: “So … what happened, exactly? I … I died. I remember dying. How … am I alive again?” 

“Well,” John says, “I traveled back in time.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Seriously.” 

“Woah. It … actually makes a lot of sense.” She looks at him, not with awe, but with wonder.

The laugh that escapes Jon is one of pure joy. 

“You cannot believe,” he says, when he regains his composure, “how glad I am to hear you say that.” 

It’s nice to have Sasha in the know. 

Martin has taken up residence in the secure storage room, sleeping on the cot Jon has brought in, stockpiling canned food, and he has stolen the corkscrew from the kitchenette and sleeps with it under his pillow, so Jon thinks that maybe even though his ordeal has been cut short it comparison to last time, it might have had the same overall effect. 

“You know, it’s sweet that you saved him this time,” Sasha teases him a few days after their conversation, “Shows you really do care!” 

“Of course I care! I went back in time for all of you!” he huffs back, but he’s not actually mad. They’ve been meeting in his office, after work has ended and Tim has gone home after tough days of squabbling with Jon over Smirke and worms and tape recorders, and Martin has barricaded himself in his new room. Sasha asks him questions, and he tells her all the answers he has. Slowly, carefully, he unravels the mystery in front of her eyes, the way Leitner wanted to do for him. The first night, he spends an unholy amount of time explaining the Entities to her, and the way Avatars work, and what makes a monster or creature different from an Avatar. He tells her how to quit, that it’s a possibility, albeit a grim one, and she tells him to fuck off, because this feels right, and that she’s just too curious to just give everything up. 

He tells her about the apocalypse, how it was his fault, and spends the rest of the night fighting off her reassurances that Elias or Jonah or whatever his name is was to blame, because he doesn’t need them. He’s had enough of that from Martin. 

Martin. He sleeps so close to Jon’s office, using an old sweater as a blanket, hand clutched tightly around the corkscrew even in deep slumber. Sometimes, Jon deliberates going into the storage room and just watching him sleep, but he doesn’t; instead, he thinks. Sasha got her memories back, and it only took an extracted statement and a lot of effort. Could he do that for everyone else? It’s a difficult question, and one that places him at a moral crossroads where he doesn’t know what path to choose. Jon has always been selfish, and he imagines that if Tim were to receive his memories from that other life, to know what that other Tim knew before he died, he would also receive the hate he felt for Jon. And despite everything, Jon really doesn’t want Tim to hate him. He wants Tim to be his friend, desperately. Further, Sasha had the least amount of diverging memories that he had to give back, whereas Tim has a couple of years worth of things he has ‘forgotten’, and Martin has even more. Does Jon even have the power to go through with it? What if all they recall is the moment of their death? They would certainly hate him, then, if that was the case. 

Sometimes, he sleeps. There have been a few live statements that he compelled out from people on the street, sitting in coffee shops or on park benches or on the bus or anywhere, really, so he wanders through dreams and watches them suffer, over and over and over again. He remembers what Helen had told him, long ago, in the tunnels, that in the end, she had just accepted that nothing was going to change about her … feeding habits, so she stopped feeling bad about it. Jon doesn’t want to let go of the guilt, one of the last remaining shreds of humanity he can cling to, but it is slowly but surely slipping through his fingers as he starts caring less and less. 

Occasionally, he can feel a pair of icy grey eyes turning towards him, and takes great joy in the knowledge that they cannot seem to focus on him, that their gaze is slipping away every time they try to observe him, so that eventually, they stop trying altogether, and try to observe Martin or Tim or Sasha instead, but Jon always knows when they do, and changes the topic to something completely irrelevant. The Archives have become a dead zone, a blind spot for the man in the tower. It feels good. It feels … almost safe.

Of course, that is exactly when things go terribly wrong. 

“He wasn’t there,” Sasha says, when they meet in the empty Institute on Saturday morning, the sun just barely rising over the horizon. “I looked and looked through the window and he wasn’t there.” 

Jon stops in his tracks. It’s the beginning of April, and he immediately knows who she is referring to. 

Michael hasn’t been there.

He’s feared this would happen, him changing the timeline too much. In the last few weeks, he’s been thinking if meeting Michael is even necessary, now that Sasha remembers her past, present, and future, but it certainly is concerning. The Distortion got them out of several tight spots, and even though things had not ended well with Helen, he’d hoped that perhaps, he could make peace with Michael this time. 

“Doesn’t matter,” he says to Sasha, to calm down her nerves and reassure her, “We know how to kill Prentiss. We don’t need Michael’s help, for now.” She doesn’t appear convinced, wringing her hands and playing with a decorative button on the sleeve of her cardigan. 

“But shouldn’t we deal with Timothy Hodge, first? The flesh-hive might still be dangerous -,” she starts to say, before she is interrupted by the sound of the heavy, fireproof door to the Archives being slammed open. It’s Tim, clothing disheveled and hair resembling a bird’s nest, barreling into the room, blood dripping from his arm.

“No,” Jon says, as realization dawns. 

“I need to make a statement,” Tim says, face gone completely serious. He is panting, heavily, and gently cradles his injured arm against the other. 

“Sasha, get the first aid kit,” Jon says, just as Martin comes out of his storage room to check what is causing the commotion in the main room.

“What is going - Good God, Tim!” Martin says, dropping the plastic cup of water he was holding.

“I’m fine,” Tim says, eyes fixed on Jon, “But I need to make a statement.” 

“Of course,” Jon says, trying to mask his own nervousness and the cold, sinking sting of fear in his heart. This is not how things should be. “But for now, you’re bleeding all over my statements, so I will take your statement after Sasha has bandaged up your arm.” 

“It’s just a scratch,” Tim says, ignoring the way blood runs down his entire arm in crimson rivulets, dripping slowly on what is, in fact, a box of statements. Discredited ones, mostly, but still. They have to keep some resemblance of order.

“Right,” Jon says. Sasha comes fluttering back, directing Tim into a chair, and spraying disinfectant onto a cotton round. “I guess we can talk right now. Statement of Timothy Stoker, Assistant Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding …” 

“A … series of paranormal sightings,” Tim says, echoing the exact words of the statement Sasha had given, back in the other timeline. She looks up at Jon with eyes that say that she noticed it, too, as she presses the cotton onto the cuts on Tim’s arm. He hisses through gritted teeth. 

“Wuss,” Sasha calls him at the same time as Jon says, “Martin, would you mind making some tea for Tim?” 

“Sure,” Martin says, looking extremely worried about the whole situation. “Would you like some, too? Sasha? … I’ll make tea for everyone, I guess …” He hurries down to the kitchenette to turn on the kettle. 

“Statement begins,” Jon says, gravely looking down at Tim, whose arm Sasha is now cautiously wrapping with white gauze. 

“I’ve seen a lot of those worms you talk about outside. I’ve always just stepped on them, didn’t want you or Martin to see and panic, but I haven’t really minded them. Sure, they’re not exactly nice to look at and the way they move is certainly not natural, but … I always thought you two were just overreacting a bit. Yeah. Not anymore. 

“I was window-shopping, a few days ago. The salary here at the Institute is … not the best, even with the promotion and raise we got after the transfer to the Archives, but most of the time I can’t complain. I do like to look at department-store windows once in a while, just for fun, and I did that when I saw it … him … In the reflection. It looked … warped, not real. Nothing about its shape made sense, except for large, stretched, grotesque hands, looking like someone stuck knives onto fingers and then enlarged the entire structure. So I turned around, and all I saw was a tall, thin man with long, blond curls and hands that were normal, if rather large. I thought I must have imagined things, but he was staring at me, and all that time that I tried to figure out what exactly it was about him that looked so  _ wrong _ , he didn’t blink even once. And when I turned back to the window, his reflection was still there, and it was once again … distorted.” 

Sasha flinches visibly, and Tim is momentarily taken out of the statement to look at her.

“You okay?” he asks, voice quiet and concerned. 

“I should be asking you that,” Sasha says. “You’re the one who was hurt.” One of her hands is resting on his lower arm, gently squeezing, providing comfort.

“Go on, please, Tim,” Jon says. Martin comes over, setting their cups of tea onto the table. Tim barely looks at his before he starts talking again.

“Anyway, when I turned around once more, he seemed to be gone, lost in the crowd. I wasn’t … scared. More confused, or annoyed, that this guy just stared at me for such a long time, I mean, hasn’t he ever learned that that makes people uncomfortable? What kind of creep does that? And then I wondered if maybe he just thought I was devastatingly handsome, and eventually, I kind of forgot about him. 

“I saw him again the next day, which was yesterday, just sitting at a table in a cafe, reading a book that was actually an average-sized hardcover, but looked utterly tiny in his hands. He just stared at the pages, not seeming to actually read them, and he never turned a page, but instead closed the book and opened it again to a random page. Sometimes he flipped all the way to the end before going back to a page somewhere in the middle of the book. Now, I’m certainly not the least eccentric person in the world, but even I found that peculiar. 

“I had to walk past the seating area of the cafe, so when I got closer, I realized that the book was one about architecture, and that I, myself, had actually read it, because there was a chapter on Smirke in it, with a few quite excellent photos of buildings he designed that aren’t among the most accessible. When I had walked past him, I looked back over my shoulder, and sure enough, he had the chapter about Smirke open, just staring at one of the photos of a maze in the garden of some mansion he designed in his early years as an architect. 

“So yeah, I thought that was weird, like, really weird, but I didn’t want to talk to him that much. I still thought he was a creep, and I figured, maybe this was just a coincidence? But if I saw him again, I would confront him about it. 

“I did see him again. That same day, in fact. I left work, and it was dark out, and I noticed that even though the cafe was usually closed at that time, the lights were still on, and the door was open, and there was just one guy sitting alone at a table. I recognized him immediately, and I had promised myself I would confront him, so I went inside. I didn’t sit down, I’m not that stupid, but instead I asked him who he was and why he was following me. He laughed.

“Jon, I have never heard a sound more terrible. It was as if he wasn’t laughing at all, and at the same time, as if an entire choir of large-handed blonde men was laughing, all at the same time, but all in a different way, but all of them exactly the same, even though that makes no sense. Nothing about him made sense. And then he said his name was Michael, and that I was asking the wrong questions.

“I don’t remember sitting down, but I was. I asked him what he was, and he said ‘How …” 

“How would a melody describe itself when asked.” Sasha’s face is grim. Martin looks at her, eyebrows raised in surprise, but Tim doesn’t even seem to notice her speaking at the same time as he does. 

“I think I told him how stupid that was, and then I asked what he wanted. Why he was following me. He said he wanted to help, that there was something coming, something dangerous, and he wanted to show me how to fight it, so that I could protect the rest of you. He also said he didn’t really care if ‘the Archivist or his little friends live or die’, but it was clear he didn’t like whatever was going to attack us, and that he wanted to even the scales a bit. He told me to meet him at Hanwell Cemetery. 

“So I did what any sane person would do: I went home. I ignored it. Spent some time trying to think up some funny April Fools’ jokes to annoy you guys with. But as I went to bed that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about that meeting and how … Michael … said that if I wanted to protect you, to save your lives, I needed to meet him. Granted, it was a pretty stupid thing to do, meeting some weird distorted probably-monster-guy at a cemetery, but I clearly wasn’t thinking straight, so I did it anyway.

“He was waiting for me as I got there, and I saw that his reflection in the rain puddles was the same warped monstrosity as in the shop windows, and I began to think that maybe meeting him out here wasn’t such a good idea, when he greeted me enthusiastically, like a friend, and led me away from the cemetery towards a row of houses. The one at the very end, farthest away from us, looked abandoned and run down, but what scared me more was that the walk was way longer than it should have been, and the closer we got to the house, the more worms started to appear, the same worms that are now always around the Institute. I stepped on a few and every time, Michael clicked his tongue as if disapproving of that. 

“Well, we went inside. It was empty, dusty, and looked worse on the inside than it looked on the outside. I thought I knew what to expect, you made us all listen to Martin’s statement, but oh God, I can still smell it. It was almost unbearable, and I was trying so hard not to vomit. Michael didn’t seem affected by it at all, though. The floor was absolutely covered in worms, and they all congregated around a shape in the corner, a shape that might have once been a man. I couldn’t help it, I had to retch, but that was a huge mistake. That … thing … that body, it snapped its head around, what once must have been its eyes focused on me, and the worms started flowing out of it towards me. I screamed and fell back; Michael just stood there, watching, a smile on his face. 

“I don’t know where I got the fire extinguisher from. I just had it in my hand, suddenly, cold and firm, and I just didn’t think at all. I just sprayed them. And it worked! It actually worked! They started dying, making terrible sounds, so I moved forward and sprayed the … host body? The former person who was now a palace for worms? He didn’t fight back, but I could see that it hurt, until it didn’t. I found his driver’s license. It said ‘Timothy Hodge’. I remember him, of course. I read the statement. But … it affected me. He and I have the same name. 

“Anyway, I was just staring at the license, at the name, thinking about what kind of a guy he maybe once was, when I felt something slice into my shoulder. I hadn’t even noticed the worm burrowing into it, but Michael’s fingers, cutting into my skin, pulling it out, it hurt more than I imagine the worm ever could. I don’t remember what I said, or when I left. I was just so out of it, and I came back to myself wandering the streets close to the Institute, arm still bleeding. And I guess you know the rest. Statement ends, I guess.” Tim leans back into his chair with a deep, exhausted sigh.

It’s Martin who speaks first.

“Can we requisition some more fire extinguishers?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” Jon says, “The forms should be in one of the cabinets in the other office. I will also … speak to Elias, I guess, about switching to a CO2 fire suppression system. Having sprinklers in an Archive really is a stupid idea, anyway.” 

“Wow,” Tim says, his usual smile slowly starting to reappear, “I can’t believe it only took me almost being killed by worms to make you willingly talk to Elias!” Jon gives him a sharp glare. 

“Anyway, Jon, I think Tim should take a few days off,” Sasha says with a pointed look, and Jon nods.

“I agree,” he says, “Tim, you’re off the entire next week. Try not to enjoy it too much.” 

“Can’t promise that, boss!” Tim says and wriggles his eyebrows, “I should get myself attacked more often if it means free vacation days!” 

They send Tim home. He gives them a peace sign and a wide grin on his way out.

Jon sits at his desk, sipping the now-cold tea Martin made him. Sasha sits on the ground, back leaned against the desk, staring up at the ceiling. 

“What the fuck are we supposed to do, Jon?” she asks. 

“I don’t know. I really, really don’t know,” he whispers back. He’s propping his chin up on his hands, trying to find an answer, but he has none. Sasha had never met Michael again before she died. He fully plans on keeping Tim alive past the Prentiss attack, and hopefully far beyond that, but he doesn’t know what this change will mean for them in the future, and with a start he realizes that he has gotten so comfortable knowing exactly what is going to happen and when, he doesn’t know how to deal with complete uncertainty about the future anymore. 

“Are you worried,” he asks instead, “that he didn’t come to you, again?” 

“I don’t know why he chose me, back then,” Sasha says, “Maybe it was random. I don’t know. I don’t worry about myself, I’m worried about Tim.” 

“You care for him.” The Eye drops the knowledge into his brain, sudden as ever, because surely Jon would never have come to that conclusion himself. He’s always been rather clueless about how other people and their relationships work.

“Stop reading my thoughts, Jon!” 

“I told you, I can’t -” 

There’s a short knock on the door, and it swings open to reveal Martin. 

“Sorry,” he says, sticking just his head in through the doorway, “I didn’t know you guys were still here, but I saw the light under the door, and I thought I’d just, you know, check up on you? See if you wanted any tea, or maybe some food?”

Jon smiles at him. Martin, always the caretaker; it’s burned into his soul and defines him to his very core.

“We’re fine, Martin,” he says, “But if you want to come sit with us, feel welcome to.” 

Martin does sit down, taking the chair that Sasha had abandoned in favor of the floor, but says: “I don’t want to intrude …” 

“You’re not, believe me,” Sasha says, “Jon’s just being rude again.” 

“I’m … Sasha … I’m not being rude, I …” Jon stammers, but Sasha just rolls her eyes at him. 

“Relax,” she says, “I’m only teasing.” 

They sit together, chatting about everything that’s not related to Tim and his meeting with Michael, all of them keen to avoid the subject. Jon catches himself staring at Martin more than once, but he also sees Martin stare back, which he chooses to take as a good sign. Eventually, they move out of the office into the storeroom, the three of them lounging on the cot, pressed close to each other in the tight space, with Jon wedged in-between Sasha and Martin, as they share a bottle of wine that Sasha procured from somewhere, passing it around and not bothering with glasses. They talk, about architecture and theater and poetry, until Martin and Jon get into a heated debate about Keats, which goes on until Sasha starts to hit Jon with Martin’s pillow to get them to stop. 

When hours have ticked away, and Sasha is asleep with her head on his shoulder and Martin’s legs crossed over his, Jon looks at the calendar that Martin has hung up on the wall and counts the days until the events he has come to think of as milestones. The Prentiss attack, mere months away. The Unknowing, still so far away. The End of the World, creeping closer and closer with each passing hour. 

Martin’s snores are a comforting sound, so familiar, and he’s missed this. Being close to people, of course, is one thing, but mostly he’s missed having Martin close to him by his side.

Jon considers waking him up right there and then, and drawing the statement from his mouth with whatever strength he has left in him, so that he can have his very own Martin back with him, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks over and watches as Martin’s chest slowly rises and falls, rises and falls, Martin’s eyes closed tight, his eyelashes so light you can barely see them, the dusting of freckles across his nose, the smattering of sparse stubble covering his cheeks. He loves this man. He wishes he could tell him. 

Gently, careful not to move his arm too much as to not disturb the sleeping Sasha, he reaches over with one hand to brush his finger softly across Martin’s cheek. It feels as it has always felt, and Jon has to stifle a sob as all the memories of every past kiss and caress they shared comes rushing back into his brain and threatens to drown him in this all-consuming wave of sorrow. 

Tomorrow, when a new dawn has broken, and Tim recovers and Sasha goes to obsessively make arrangements for if she suddenly and unexpectedly dies and Martin hides away in his storeroom turned living quarters and Jon reads statement after statement in an effort to soothe the aching hunger in his belly, they will work together to make this future the best they can be. Soon, Melanie will walk through these doors for the first time, and he will make sure she is not caught in this particular web, and he will call Georgie and they will go to that Hungarian place she likes so much even if he hates it, because it makes her happy, and maybe he’ll even check in on Daisy and Basira even though they don’t quite know who he is yet, just to see how they’re doing, and he will call Gerry and they will talk about Gerry’s hunt for Leitners, and maybe they’ll even talk about Tim, about Prentiss, about Michael. 

He loves them, he knows that then, and of course he has known that before, but he has never put it into words. Jonathan Sims, who grew up with basically no family and very few friends, loves this random group of people so much that he almost cannot stand it. All that he wants is for them to be safe and happy, because he loves them. 

He looks over at Sasha, then at Martin, then up on the ceiling. 

“Please,” he calls out to his God, who sees and knows everything, “Please let me save them. Help me save them. They need to live.” 

He receives no answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the amount of statements in this chapter, it's just that ... there's a lot of them ........ in the original podcast .........
> 
> As far as writing goes, I finished three chapters this week, and I'm marching towards the end with a steady pace. There's still some ways to go, but I think I might be finished in 2-4 weeks or so, if all goes well. The three chapters I wrote this week are full of dialogue, which is bad for me (since I hate writing dialogue and I think I'm quite bad at it!) but it's good for character development because by God these people need to talk to each other. So. Yeah <3
> 
> As always, thank you for every comment, kudo, like, bookmark, and whatever else there is to do. I've never had engagement like this on any of my writing, and it honestly makes me look forward to the writing itself so much more. So, I wanted to say a big thank you to anyone who engages with this fic in any way! You guys are so awesome!


	7. the knife which will slaughter heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: arson, loss of identity, intense paranoia, worms (lots)
> 
> Some content taken from MAG 28 and MAG 165.

“Oh, don’t be such a big baby, Melanie,” a voice sounds from upstairs, “It’s just Jon, you _ know  _ Jon, you guys are friends! Don’t make such a big deal out of this.”

Martin is not usually one to eavesdrop, but, well, if they’re right there and talking so loudly that he can hear them even with the fireproof door between them, then they deserve to be eavesdropped on. He really does try to focus on the statement he’s currently supposed to be researching, a statement about a door that unnerves him a lot and that Jon dropped onto his desk just this morning with a grumble about distortions, but whoever is on their way down to the Archives is really loud, and he cannot concentrate, the words on the page swimming together into a spiral of typewritten characters. 

“It’s not Jon I have a problem with, it’s this goddamn Institute!” a different voice argues. Martin thinks: Hey, that’s not fair, but then he remembers that yeah, they did have that whole statement-leak scandal in the 90s, and public opinion of the Magnus Institute generally isn’t the best, so maybe it is fair. Whatever. What is more interesting, and fills Martin with at least some dread, is that these people clearly know Jon. Now, Martin doesn’t like to think of himself as a jealous person, but the fact remains that he is, in fact, a jealous person. So, when the door opens to reveal two absolutely gorgeous women, the lump in his throat threatens to choke him. 

The first one to walk in is tall and beautiful, wearing her dark curls in two buns high on her head, one on each side, a faded band t-shirt, and a black denim skirt. She is dragging someone inside, another woman, this one with shockingly bright blue hair, cut short. The blue-haired one clearly doesn’t want to be here, looking immensely uncomfortable. 

“Can I help you?” Martin says, but he stays seated. No need to get up for now. 

“Yes,” the one with the buns says, “I’m Georgie, this is Melanie, and she wants to give a statement?” 

“I do not want to give a statement,” Melanie contradicts her, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “You dragged me here. This is your fault.” Georgie ignores her. 

“We’re looking for Jon? Um, we’re his friends?” Georgie smiles at him, and something slots into place in his head.

“Georgie, oh my God, yes, of course” he says, “He talks about you guys all the time! He should be just in his office, it’s the first door on the left.” 

“Thanks!” Georgie says, then turns around to Melanie. “You go on ahead, I’ll stay out here. No need for me to give a statement.” 

“The thing is: I really don’t want to, Georgina,” Melanie says. She’s looking disdainfully at the Archives’ equipment, specifically at the ancient computer Martin should technically be typing his notes on at the moment, at least until she notices the amount of tape recorders strewn around. She picks one up and inspects it. 

“Do you guys still live in the stone age?” she says. 

Martin chuckles nervously. 

“It’s, uh - We have some, hm, technical problems with our recording software, and, well, these work just as well.” 

“If you say so … Wait, you didn’t tell us your name.” 

Martin raises his hands. 

“When was I supposed to tell you? Before or after you started insulting our equipment?” he says, and Melanie laughs out loud. 

“Oh, you’ve got bite! Not bad, Archive, not bad,” she says. She puts the tape recorder back down. 

“It’s Martin, by the way,” Martin says. Georgie’s eyes go wide.

“Oh, you’re _ the  _ Martin!” she says, pulling out Tim’s chair, already covered in dust after a couple of hours of not being used, and sitting down on it.

“I am,” Martin says, then: “Wait,  _ the _ Martin? What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Melanie says and saunters over to Jon’s office, “that I will be excluding myself from this conversation now.” She doesn’t knock, just rips the door open and disappears inside. Martin can hear a surprised yelp from Jon, then she slams the door closed behind her and he is alone with Georgie, who is looking at him like he’s a particularly interesting exhibition at a museum. 

Martin stares at Georgie in confusion, and she lets out a little laugh.

“What has Jon been saying about me?” he asks. He’s genuinely nervous, of all things. What if Jon likes to complain to Georgie about how stupid his coworkers are, that weirdo Martin in particular? Or worse, what if he’s pitying him? He can imagine it, vividly: Jon, lying on the couch in Georgie’s living room, the two of them eating chocolates, while he says: “I just can’t with Martin, he’s useless at everything he does. How sad. I wish I had an assistant who actually knows how the Dewey Decimal System works.” 

Instead, Georgie says: “Only good things, I promise you.” 

“For example?” Martin asks, and she laughs again. 

“That you make the best tea he’s ever had,” she says, and her eyes shine with a sincerity that makes him actually believe her, “That he thinks you’re too selfless sometimes, and one time he told me that you knitted a sweater and that it looks really good, and oh, Martin  _ this _ , and oh, Martin  _ that _ …” 

Martin is blushing. He’s blushing, and he can feel his ears turning red as beets, and Georgie can see it too, because she’s smirking at him with a knowing look in her eyes. He’s always been prone to blushing (an unfortunate side effect of being a redhead), but this is excessive and embarrassing.

“Did … he really say all of that?” he asks. His heart beats in his chest like it’s a cage with a hummingbird inside of it, flapping its tiny wings impossibly fast. 

“He sure did,” Georgie says. 

“Oh my God,” Martin says. “He likes my tea.” 

Martin makes a resolution, then, after Georgie and Melanie leave: He’s going to man up and ask Jon out on a date. He’s had a crush on Jon for a very long time, and he’s basically gotten over the fact that a romance with his boss would be a bad idea. Now that he knows that Jon might maybe, possibly, potentially like him, too, nothing can hold him back except his own insecurities, and he’s determined to overcome those. Already, he’s rehearsing a speech in his head, and he’s clicking through restaurant recommendation sites to find one that’s both affordable and romantic (but not too romantic), when Tim comes to destroy all of his hopes and dreams with one fleeting sentence. 

“So …,” Tim says as he saunters over to Martin’s desk, “The boss and Sasha, huh?” 

Martin’s blood runs cold. Hastily, he closes the tab with a list of the best affordable Italian restaurants in central London and turns to look at Tim.

“... What?” Martin asks, very eloquently, but to be fair, he feels like he’s being crushed under a rock. A very big rock. Maybe even a mountain-sized rock. It’s not  _ fair _ .

“Jon and Sasha? Together?” Tim wiggles his eyebrows, but Martin gets the sense that he isn’t particularly happy about this arrangement, either.

“What makes you say that?” he asks, instead of making some stupid comment, trying to keep his voice as even and steady as he can.

“You know,” Tim says, gesturing wildly with his right hand, so that the multiple chains and armbands he’s wearing jingle against each other, “They’re always hanging out recently, like she’s staying late to talk to him and stuff, and they’re acting like I won’t notice!” 

“That doesn’t mean they’re dating, Tim,” Martin says. He rolls his eyes, and feels like maybe he can breathe again, at least a little bit. “Maybe they’re just good friends.” 

“Suuure,” Tim says. “That’s why they’re always standing _ really  _ close together, talking super quietly, and spring apart every time I get close? I’m telling you, they’re a  _ thing _ .” 

“Have you tried just asking Sasha?” Martin suggests. 

“Of course I have! She just denies it, but that doesn’t mean anything,” Tim says. He’s no longer smiling. “I’m sure there’s like … some rule about workplace romances. I mean, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read the stupid rule book they gave us, but Sasha probably has. She’s smart, she would be cautious … I don’t know.” 

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Tim,” Martin says, but that’s not what he thinks. Tim’s right; Sasha and Jon have been weird around each other these past couple of weeks. Living in the Archives is not an ideal situation, and though he was aware that Jon usually stays very late, Sasha has done so a lot recently, too, when she used to go home at the same time as Tim. And there is the fact that they seem to sit together a lot in Jon’s office with the door locked, voices kept low and hushed, heads bent towards each other. And yes, Sasha is everything that Martin isn’t: Beautiful, smart, clever, funny. It makes sense. 

He hates that it makes sense. 

* * *

“‘Scuse us,” one says, he doesn’t really know who, he never had any motivation to learn who is who. Breekon or Hope? Who cares. They’re the same mind in different bodies, linked closer even than he and Martin were at the end. When he looks at their faces, they swim together into one, both real and not, making his head hurt. He really, really,  _ really _ hates the Stranger and everything it entails. 

“Looking for the Archivist,” the other announces, holding a small package gingerly in one hand.

“That’s me,” Jon says. 

“Got a package for you,” the first one says.

“I can tell,” Jon says. He takes the package from Breekon or Hope. The other one hands him a clipboard. Jon signs his name on the dotted line. “You left the other part with Rosie, I presume?” 

“Receptionist lady,” one of them confirms, and the other says: “Said something about Artifact Storage.” 

“Thank you,” Jon says, “If that’s all, I would ask you to leave my Archives.” 

“Sure thing, boss,” Breekon and Hope say, and he’s not sure which one of them is speaking. Maybe it’s both of them at once. “We’ll be right out.” 

In a blink of an eye, they’re gone, as if they have never been there at all, dissolved into thin air or nothingness, who knows. He sure as hell doesn’t care where they end up when they disappear like that. 

“You’re just gonna let them go?” Sasha asks, and Jon flinches.

“Sasha,” he says, “I didn’t realize you were there. Sorry.” 

“They brought the table, didn’t they?” she asks. She’s trembling. 

“They did,” he answers. “I’m not about to kill them for that, though. They’re only the messenger, this time, at least.”

“Okay,” Sasha says, and wraps her arms around herself as if she’s freezing cold. “What are you gonna do about it?” 

“The table?” he asks, “Or the lighter?” He unwraps the package slowly, deliberately. It’s wrapped in normal brown paper, nothing fancy. No address, no handwriting, no stamps, no other identifying marks. He holds the lighter in his hand, feels the weight of it, softly brushes a thumb across the web design - then he sticks it into his pocket, right where he already keeps the keyring. Is that a bad decision? Maybe. But whether to destroy it or not, that’s a question he cannot answer right now, not as long as there is the more immediate problem of the table. 

“I’m going to call Gerry,” Jon says, “Maybe he has an idea. But I’ll let Rosie and the employees in Artifact Storage know that they’re not supposed to go near that thing, at least not alone.” 

“Good,” Sasha says. She looks at him, and he can see the wave of fear inside her eyes, threatening to swallow her whole. The sudden urge to give her a hug overcomes him, and in his head, he tries to find reasons to justify doing it before realizing that they’re friends now, and she’s in distress, so there’s no reason for him  _ not _ to hug her, and so he does. She collapses against him, burying her face in the crook of his neck, even if she has to lean down just a bit to do so. She’s shaking like the branch of a tree in a storm, clinging to him as if she lets go, she’ll be swept away. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her ear, “You’re gonna be fine. We’ll make sure you’re fine.” 

The door opens with a crash; Jon and Sasha spring apart. It’s Martin, he’s holding a bunch of files in one hand, but drops them immediately when he sees the two of them. 

“Martin,” Jon says, rushing forward to help him gather up the files, “Good God, have you never heard of knocking?” 

“Sorry, I thought you guys were out to lunch,” Martin says. He’s breathless, as if he’s run a marathon, and he’s not meeting Jon’s eye. 

“Why would we be out for lunch? Lunch has been over for more than two hours,” Sasha mumbles, just loud enough for Jon to hear her. 

“Sorry,” Martin says again when they’ve gathered up all of the statements, “Didn’t mean to disturb you guys.” He practically flees the room, still not looking up, and is gone before Jon can even reply. 

“That was weird,” Sasha says, and Jon sighs. 

“He’s going to jump to conclusions again, isn’t he?” There’s a Martin-induced headache coming, he can feel it. Right now, he only wishes he could just go up to him, shake him a bit, and yell ‘I love you’ right in his face. 

“What do you … oh.” Realization dawns on Sasha’s face, but instead of concern or annoyance, there’s a smile slowly spreading across her lips, until laughter bubbles up, sweet and pure and carefree, and suddenly he’s laughing, too, and he’s sure Martin can hear it from where he positioned himself that he can still eavesdrop on them without seeming suspicious, and he just cannot wait to tease him about this day some time in the future. 

They laugh until their ribs start hurting, and until their breath catches in their lungs. Sasha gets the hiccups, which makes them laugh again, but eventually, they calm down enough to pick up the phone and call Gerry. 

Gerry’s grand idea is not the elaborate, thoughtful plan that Jon had hoped he’d come up with, but rather more simple and, if he thinks about some of the statements he’s read in which Gerry appears, definitely in character for him. It involves Gerry, Jon, Sasha, a car, the table, and a whole lot of fire and gasoline. 

They wait until Jon confirms that Martin is softly snoring inside his little makeshift fortress, even though sleep had taken a long time to overcome him; then, they grab as many useless discredited statements as they think they can get away with to use for kindling, and head up to Artefact Storage. 

Jon doesn’t remember being in here very often; the last time he consciously entered this section of the Institute, he had an axe in his hands and murder on his mind. It’s not that different, this time, only that the axe has been replaced by a lighter and a molotov cocktail that Gerry apparently knew how to put together quite expertly. He looks around, taking in some of the artefacts both displayed and safely locked away in special containers. Some have warning labels on them, others just sit there, stacked haphazardly on top of each other, or lying in a corner; it’s almost as chaotic as the Archives, and the overall effect is one of a storeroom for an antique’s dealer long gone out of business.

They carry the table down the stairs together, Jon and Sasha carrying one end while Gerry takes the other, carefully looking over their shoulder to see if someone is approaching, even though the lights of the Institute have long since gone out, until they get to the truck Gerry rented just for this purpose. They load it onto the back of the truck with some difficulty. The table is heavier than it looks, even though it already looks very heavy indeed, and Jon has the sneaking suspicion that it is making itself more difficult to carry on purpose, as if it can feel their intentions. 

He’s not worried about this, not in the least. Even if the fire doesn’t destroy the Not-Them outright, he has a fairly clear plan if it does escape. The Eye and the Stranger are so antithetical, that just Knowing the creature should surely be too much for it to handle. With some amount of grim joy, Jon thinks back to the merry-go-round, about the taunting words and the poetry coursing through his brain, the faceless, nameless victims holding on to the carousel for dear life, as if it was the only thing they knew how to do, and the biting laugh of Not-Sasha echoing through the domain, until she was no longer laughing, and instead, begging. He’s stronger than the Not-Them now, by far, and he’s already killed it once. There are no doubts in his mind that he can do it again, even without the Eye physically looking down upon them from the sky.

Gerry slows the car down as they get to the quarry they chose because of its seclusion and absence of any flammable structures, and gets out. Sasha and Jon follow, Gerry climbing up onto the bed of the truck to push the table down. He’s not being gentle with it, and when it crashes down onto the ground, Jon thinks he can hear the faintest scream.

With a great deal of effort, they carry it away from the car, heaving under its weight and breathing sighs of relief when they finally set it down. Gerry goes to get the gasoline while Sasha and Jon tear and crumble up the statements and drape them all around the table. Sasha is quiet, not making a sound; Jon can tell she’s scared, can see her hands trembling as she surrounds the table with mountains of scrap paper with a singular determination. 

“Isn’t this overkill?” Gerry asks when he comes back and starts pouring the gasoline liberally over the table and the paper. Jon shakes his head.    
“I want to be sure,” he says, and Sasha just gives one tiny nod.

“Alright,” Gerry says, emptying the entire can of gasoline, and then pouring on another one for good measure. 

When he’s finished, they stand back as far as possible, and Gerry hands the molotov to Sasha.

“You wanna do the honors?” he asks, and she just nods, taking it into her right hand, feeling the weight of it. She holds the bottle out to Jon, who gets out his newly-reacquired lighter and lights the cloth wick. Sasha doesn’t waste any time, but throws the bottle onto the table, hitting it perfectly in the center. It catches fire in a fraction of a second, all of the paper burning up into dust immediately, and now Jon can definitely hear the screaming, and it’s getting louder, and louder, and louder, until the creature bursts forth from the table with a devastating roar and charges towards them. Circus music swells in the back of his head as the monster uncurls itself and shrieks and howls in pain as it tries to shake off the flames that burn it’s … skin? And Jon has to anchor his feet to the ground in great effort to keep from running from this thing that in his mind, has become a symbol for everything and everyone he’s lost. There’s the merry-go-round, overlaying his vision, there and not quite there, going round and round and round until he’s dizzy and he forgets which way is up and which way is down, but then he remembers, because he knows things, and he looks the monster directly in the eyes and holds up the tape recorder that he doesn’t even remember having like it’s a deadly weapon. It turns on with a devastating click that is both deafening and impossibly quiet. The Not-Them stops short just in front of them, frozen in place by fear, as the tape begins to turn. 

“I  _ know _ you,” Jon says. The tape spins and runs and turns and crackles as Sasha and Gerry shield their eyes from the bright glow of the fire and it burns and devours and desolates as the tape recorder plays back a recording from a world that was and then wasn’t and will never be again, the screaming sounds of Not-Sasha, of “ _ No! No, please, no! _ ” and “ _ I’m sorry! _ ” and the terror of her victims as all of their suffering crashes down upon both versions of the creature, and with a last desperate cry and a swell and then a burst and then a crash of static, it dies. 

It dies. 

It is dead. 

Jon comes back to himself in staccato bursts; sometimes, he is holding Martin’s hand, ashamed at what he did, screams echoing far and wide while the metal of the merry-go-round screeches obscenities into his ears; sometimes, he is standing, empty inside, eyes fixed onto the charred remains of the Not-Them, the only noise the low crackle of the now low-burning fire and the soft, choked sobs coming from Sasha. 

The tape recorder turns off.

They watch as the Not-Them dissolves into black soot, carried away by the wind, and when the flames die and Gerry pours water over the ashes and quickly sweeps them up, Jon and Sasha stand side by side, empty stares fixed upon the ground where a large black shadowy stain is still marking the spot where it died, and Jon takes Sasha’s hand and Sasha takes it and gives it a squeeze. 

* * *

Martin keeps the corkscrew with him at all times, now. The worms are there, more and more often, almost always on the steps leading to the Institute’s front doors, and now increasingly also inside the building. He has lost count of how many worms he’s squashed under his shoe, and even non-Archive employees are starting to notice them. Elias hired an extermination company, but during the hour those guys were there, they scoured the building from top to bottom and couldn’t find a single one, so they just gave up. Martin hasn’t given up, though. The cot in his storage room is surrounded on three sides by cans of soup and ravioli and fruit, and more often than not he now spends his evenings sitting on it, spooning cold pasta into his mouth with plastic utensils instead of going out to get something to eat, because going out means seeing worms, and staying in means staying safe. There are three fire extinguishers stashed in the corner of his room, and he’s hidden a bunch of them in boxes around the Archives, too, just in case. Plus, there’s the ones in the spaces where they’re actually supposed to be, and another two in Jon’s office, and one on each of their desks. All of that, and in addition, the newly-installed CO2 fire suppression system, and it still doesn’t reassure him enough.

Living in the Archives has its perks, the most important of course being safe, but what Martin actually really enjoys about this arrangement is that he doesn’t have to do that hideously long commute anymore. Instead, he just falls out of bed fifteen minutes before work starts, brushes his teeth, and puts on some clothes, and he’s ready for work. One day, though, when a brutal nightmare full of pulsing worms and an oozing, black liquid forces him out of sleep far too early, he gets to see the real reason Jon kept a cot in a storeroom. 

Jon sleeps at his desk, using his arms as a pillow, breathing slow and softly. In sleep, he looks younger; the scowl disappears, and the harsh lines around his mouth soften, his lips slightly open. Martin’s heart hurts at the sight, a single sharp sting of regret and jealousy and the pain of a missed chance, as he watches Jon breathe in and out and in again, while on the wall the clock ticks ever closer to dawn.

The Institute gets quiet at night; it’s unnerving at best, downright scary at worst. Sometimes, Martin just sits in the main room of the Archives, straining his ears for any worm sounds, but only hearing the creaking of the old wooden beams that make up the building’s structure, or Jon’s footsteps as he paces back and forth in his office. On nights like this, he feels as if the building could come crashing down on him at any moment, just collapsing in a span of seconds, burying him under rubble. He’s always been drawn to the creative side of things, to the macabre songs of poets, and so, when things get especially bad, he takes out the cheap journal he bought at the train station and the fancy pen that Jon gave him for his birthday, and starts writing poetry, just like he did when he was a teenager. He steals one of Jon’s numerous tape recorders (seriously, it’s like they’re multiplying) and records some of his better poems, closing his eyes as the static calms him down and pulls him away from the brink of his own paranoia. 

Martin wanders the halls; he returns to the library and runs his fingers along the spines of the books he spent so many long afternoons sorting and organizing and sorting again; he always wanted to read some of them, but he never had the time. Now he does, so he pulls out books at random and starts leafing through them until he eventually loses himself in one, reading about folk legends and ghost sightings and witch hunts, about belief systems and philosophical questions and near-death experiences, about spiders and spirals, fractals and famine, the hunters and the hunted. He explores the administrative hallway that he hasn’t visited since his interview with Elias so many years ago; he remembers fumbling through it, certain that the man in front of him knew about the lies he had put on his CV, that these icy grey eyes could see right into his soul and separate the truth from the lies. It’s been years, and he still doesn’t know how he actually got the job. Martin walks past that office, noting that the weird eye paintings are still there, and still the same, and still make the hallway look like an eye doctor’s waiting room; they line the entire hallway, probably more than twenty paintings, all of them filled with eyes that seem to follow him as he wanders. In front of the door to Artefact Storage, he hesitates, remembering Sasha’s stories about cannibalistic books and dream-stealing pillows, and does not go in. Instead, he walks up the stairs to the very top of the building and stares out of one of the large windows there, just watching silently as the sun rises over the rooftops of London. People start to wander in; he greets some of the administrative staff as they drag themselves up the stairs, eyes watery and still filled with longing for their beds. Martin heads towards the Archives, but he’s walking slowly, not in any hurry, since Jon is probably still asleep on his desk, and last night, he looked like he needed every second of sleep he could get. When his feet eventually do carry him back into the Archives, Sasha is there, sipping from a takeaway cup of coffee, just staring off into space.

“Morning,” Martin says quietly and receives a small smile in return. “You’re here early.” 

“Yeah,” Sasha says. She drains the cup and throws it into the recycling bin Tim insisted on, then points to Jon’s office with her thumb. “I was going to talk to Jon about some upcoming stuff, but, well …” 

“He’s still asleep, then?” Martin asks, and hopes that the upcoming stuff isn’t date-related, and then he wishes he could kick himself, because he’s happy for them, truly, but it just isn’t _ fair _ . 

“Like a baby,” Sasha chuckles, a fond look in her eyes. “Didn’t want to wake him. He needs sleep.” 

“He really does,” Martin agrees, “He works far too much.” Sasha nods. She picks up a random statement and starts skimming one of the pages, even though they aren’t officially on the clock, yet. 

As it seems, Jon has heard them talking: He’s awake, blinking blearily at the neon lights of the Archives, rubbing his hands against each other in an effort to warm them up. 

“Why are you here already?” he asks Sasha. 

“Oh, you know,” she says, her voice quivering just the tiniest bit, “Wanted to go over some things for later today.” They both glance at the calendar; it says 29th of July, 2016, but there’s nothing marked in it, no appointments or birthdays or anything, just an ordinary day, represented by a blank square on a piece of paper. 

“Martin,” Jon says, and Martin immediately snaps to attention despite himself and his own tired state, “Did you and Tim finish researching Dr. Elliot’s statement?” 

They have; it’s been over two weeks. Dr. Elliot had appeared, given his statement, and left them with empty eyes and a teeth-filled apple that Jon had handed over to Artefact Storage without a second glance. But there has not been a lot of things to research, as all of the leads they had ran into obstacles they couldn’t overcome, until they eventually ran out of things to try. Martin is fairly certain, however, that Tim handed that particular report in a couple of days ago. 

“Nope, not happening, Jon,” he says instead of answering the question, “You’re not my boss for at least another fifteen minutes.” 

Jon looks stunned and after a second or so that Martin can practically feel his brain frantically working out what just happened, he actually looks a bit proud. Sasha tries to stifle a laugh but ends up snorting, instead. 

It’s a good morning, indeed. 

Martin makes tea, just a splash of milk for Jon, black for Sasha, and a ridiculous amount of sugar for Tim when he eventually does arrive, albeit twenty minutes late; he enjoys the appreciative noises they make when he sets the steaming mugs in front of them. He drinks his own tea in slow, small sips as he listens to Tim talk about the research for the Ramao statement, and he enjoys the quiet companionship here in these Archives, when he sees the tiny black-and-silver shape wriggling along one of the walls. Somewhere, he hears a distant click, as if someone turned on one of the million tape recorders they have.

“Oh no,” he says, trembling hands immediately grabbing at the fire extinguisher he keeps under his desk. Tim and Sasha look up, then follow his gaze to where the worm makes its way towards one of the shelves, leaving a silvery trail of slime behind. 

“Ugh, disgusting,” Tim says under his breath. He takes one of the discredited statements, holding it up as if he means to squash the worm like one does a fly. “Come here, little worm-y thing. Uncle Tim wants to brutally murder you!”

When the folder crashes down upon the worm, it does kill the worm-y thing. Unfortunately, it takes down the wall with it, ripping like wet tissue paper, shelves crashing down and folders and file organizers falling to the floor and burying the unused desk under thousands of sheets of paper. There’s silence for a moment, only accompanied by the faint crackle of static in Martin’s ears, and then they come, they come rushing in, and then they’re everywhere, and Sasha yells for Jon and Jon comes running and Tim is spraying worms with his fire extinguisher and Martin is frozen, rooted to the ground, until Jon crashes into him, dragging him along, screaming: “ _ Run! _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today before we get really into it next week! 
> 
> Not gonna lie to you, it's been a bad week for writing. It's been so cold that our heating stopped working, which is a really great thing to happen if it's already freezing cold outside!! Doesn't help that I'm currently writing stuff from season 3, which is ridiculously convoluted, and my least favorite. Oh well, I'll get through it. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @talizorah or on twitter @tinybluepixels if you want to come yell at me outside of ao3 <3


	8. for there were sleeping dragons all around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: worms (seriously, there's so many worms), general Jane-Prentiss-and-Corruption-grossness, gun violence, dead bodies (just one, really), panic attacks
> 
> Some content taken from MAG 39.

They run. 

Their feet hit the floor, fast, staccato beats of fear, Tim at the front, his long legs carrying him away from those things so much faster. Jon is lagging behind; Martin can hear his labored breathing. Once, he looks back to see if Jon is still there or if he has been consumed by the ever-chasing cascade of worms, but he’s there, he’s still there, and he’s yelling: “The storeroom!” from the back, so Tim takes a hard right, the rubber soles of his shoes screeching against the floor as he skids around the corner. He’s dragging Sasha behind him, gripping her hand so tight that his knuckles turn white and his fingers leave angry red marks on her wrist. 

They reach the storeroom, Martin’s fortress against the worms, and Jon slams the door shut just in time. They watch in horror as the worms crawl up the door, obscuring the window completely with their writhing mass, the slick sounds of their movements now muffled by the thick steel door. 

Martin heads straight for the fire extinguishers he keeps in the corner, as some of the worms have managed to slither in right before Jon slammed the door closed, and he sprays them, again and again, until they’re all dead, lying unmoving on the floor, and the fire extinguisher sputters and coughs as the last of the gas is expelled. 

“Jon!” Sasha yells behind him, which is enough for Martin to be ripped out of his trance and turn around, just in time to see Jon collapsing on the ground, clutching his leg. Thin rivulets of blood run down his calf from where several of the worms have burrowed into his flesh. 

“Martin, your corkscrew!” Sasha orders, holding out her hand to him without even looking, and even though Martin has no idea how she knows about the corkscrew he now compulsively keeps with him at all times, he gets it out immediately. Sasha doesn’t waste any time, but stabs the corkscrew all over Jon’s leg, pulling out the worms one by one. Tim stands beside them, stomping on the worms she drops on the floor next to Jon’s feet, just to make sure they really are dead. Jon’s face is contorted with pain, but he doesn’t scream, just presses his eyes shut tight and bears it as Sasha stabs and stabs and stabs. 

“Why do you even have a goddamn corkscrew?” Tim asks. 

“Well, what else do you wanna use? A knife? Not really the best idea, Tim! But if you want to dig around in your arm with a goddamn knife, go ahead! A corkscrew works far better!” 

“Okay, sorry for asking,” Tim says and goes back to stomping worms. 

“Look, you guys all got to go home every night and think nice, non-worm-related thoughts, while I was stuck here with nothing to do but imagine things … things exactly like this!” He gestures towards the door, where worms are still obscuring the view out of the room. 

Jon groans in pain as Sasha pulls out the last of the worms, then immediately pulls the fabric of his jeans back down over his calf. Immediately, the blood starts soaking through the hole-ridden fabric, but Martin is’t going to tell Jon that it would probably be better to let the wounds air, and that clothes won’t stop the worms, because right now, they don’t need any more fighting, they need to stick together.

“Is this safe?” Tim asks, “Or are they going to break in?” 

Jon shakes his head. He’s still breathing hard, a thin sheen of sweat covering his face. 

“No, we’re safe. It’s a climate controlled environment to protect the files,” he says. “Nothing gets in or out.” 

“So, we’re trapped,” Tim says.

“Basically? Yes. We are, indeed, trapped.” 

There’s a click in the corner, followed by a whirring sound. They all look to see a tape recorder, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, take up its operation. 

“Is that the one you took, Martin?” Jon asks, but Martin just shakes his head, not taking his eyes off the new recorder.

“That one’s in my desk, actually,” Martin says. 

“Great!” Tim throws up his hands in esparation. “It’s the haunted tape recorders again, just like at Jon’s birthday! We officially have haunted tape recorders, people!” 

“I think,  _ Tim _ , that this is the least of our worries right now,” Sasha says, “We need to figure out a way out of here.” 

“Right,” Jon agrees, “We switched out the fire suppression system to a CO2 one a couple of weeks ago. Setting that off should be enough to kill Prentiss and the worms.” 

“Great, give me your lighter, then,” Tim says, holding out his hand. Martin starts laughing nervously as Jon just stares at Tim.

“Tim,” he says very slowly, “Did you know that humans cannot survive without oxygen, either?” 

“Of course I do,” Tim says, sneering. “But you’re not, right? Human?” 

“Oh, shit,” Sasha murmurs under her breath.

“What - What, Tim, that’s bullshit, Jon’s … Of course Jon is human!” Martin stammers, offended on Jon’s behalf, but when he looks over to the man in question, there’s no anger in his face, just sadness, and weariness. He looks tired, so unfathomably tired. “Jon?” 

“I … let’s talk about this some other time, Tim,” he says, voice barely audible even in the relative silence of the sealed room, “It doesn’t matter right now. All of you  _ are _ human, and I will not let you die.” He sounds like he wants to say something else, but then catches himself and just looks down at the blood-soaked fabric covering his leg. 

“I’m not letting this go, Jon,” Tim says. Sasha rolls her eyes at him.

“Maybe now’s really not the best time, huh, Tim?” she says, arms crossed, staring him down until he says “Oh,  _ fine _ ,” and the tension dissipates from the room.

“Okay, so what do we actually … do?” Martin asks, directing his question at Jon. Jon, who’s not human. It makes sense. It does make terrible sense, and it also makes sense that Sasha seems to know this already, because … No. Martin will not allow himself to spiral.

“There’s tunnels under the Institute,” Jon says, “If we get there, we can go around and to the manual release for the fire suppression system.” 

“Oh, great, creepy murder tunnels,” Tim says. Sasha jabs her elbow into his ribs and he yelps. 

“How many fire extinguishers do we have left?” Jon asks. Martin looks into the corner and looks at the two extinguishers he stashed there; the one he has in his hand is practically empty. It’s not enough to get them through the worms. Two is not enough. The others know it too, for no one is talking, and even Tim resists the urge to make a tasteless joke.

Finally: “I’ll distract them,” Jon says. 

“No,” Sasha says immediately, and Martin agrees. He likes Jon, a lot, and he would rather that he remained in one piece, but Jon has that determined, stubborn look in his eyes that he gets when he’s acting before he’s finished thinking about it properly, and there’s no stopping him. 

“I’ll distract her, and that’ll distract the worms, and you will go through the tunnels,” Jon says. He holds out a tape recorder to Sasha that Martin is sure wasn’t there before. “You know the way, Sasha. Whatever you do, don’t split up.” 

Sasha hesitates before taking the recorder, and when she finally does, there are tears in her eyes, threatening to spill over her cheeks. 

“Be careful,” she whispers. 

“Keep them safe,” Jon says in response. 

* * *

He goes out first. 

The pain shoots up his leg in agonizing bursts every time he takes a step. He forgot how much this hurt, and even though the wounds have already scabbed over and are beginning to heal, whatever influence the Corruption is exacting over him right now is burning in his veins. At least, he thinks with a grim smile, Jonah will be satisfied, and hopefully mark the Corruption off as completed. 

The worms swarm around him, but they don’t attack, not this time. He holds the tape recorder up, and they recoil from it, the hive remembering its last encounter with the Archivist and his toys. 

“Jane!” he yells into the Archive, and a sick groan echoes back, until she comes into view, and he cannot suppress a gasp. 

Whatever was left of Jane Prentiss last time he saw her had been eaten away by worms. The red dress is gone, and so is most of the coat she had thrown on over it, leaving behind a thin threading of fabric that does nothing to cover the horror the worms have wreaked upon her body, now more holes than solid flesh, puckered through like honeycomb, but there are no bees, just worms, worms crawling over her arms and legs and stomach, worms replacing her eyes, worms slithering through the last remaining strands of hair. 

“I can help you, Jane,” he says. He holds up his hands, sees the worms recoil, and knows it is because of the tape recorder. The hive is afraid, afraid of him, and it floods the Archivist’s mind with a power he hasn’t experienced since he was a god wandering through the apocalypse he created, so many tiny minds completely overtaken by fear and projecting it all on him.

This isn’t what he wants, though. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, he kneels down, hands still up in the air, until he lowers one of them even slower to the ground, dropping the tape recorder. The Archivist knows that his coworkers, his friends, the people he loves, made it relatively safely down the trapdoor to the tunnels. He looks up at Jane Prentiss, but there is no face left to show her emotions, if she still has any, so he remains silent as the worms inch closer and closer.

“You cannot hurt me. Not in any way that matters,” he says, and puts all of the power he feels rushing through his body into those words. Jane snarls at him, and he can see the strings of muscles moving behind her ripped skin, but he is not afraid. The Corruption doesn’t deserve his fear. 

Instead, he moves his focus from the hive itself to the thing that once wasn’t the hive, to what is left of Jane Prentiss, to the woman she once was. He pictures her, knows what she looked like before all of this, and looks into what once were her eyes. 

“I can cure the itch,” he says. 

Her head turns to the side, looking away from him, as worms fall out of her eye sockets like tears. 

“I can help you.” 

She snarls, baring her teeth, the one thing that the worms apparently haven’t touched, their whiteness stark against the silver-black moving mass of the worms, but he doesn’t give the hive the satisfaction of flinching.

“I can make it stop,” he says. 

Is that a sob? A stifled cry? It is - she’s reaching out, one hand towards him, shuffling closer, the worms moving faster and faster, working against her, trying to stop her muscles from moving, but the Archivist compels her to move forward, beckons her with whispers of relief and freedom and release, until finally the tip of her finger touches his hand.

“ _ Ceaseless Watcher, _ ” he whispers for the first time in years, “ _ turn your gaze upon this wretched thing and let her suffering end. _ ” 

The Archivist isn’t sure if it will work, now that the sky is empty and no longer physically looking down upon him, and now that he doesn’t have the power of the entire apocalyptic world at his behest, but the Eye is always open, always watching, eternal lids ever apart, and so it turns it’s gaze towards Jane Prentiss.

There’s mercy there, for what Jane Prentiss once was; the Eye is not the Desolation. It does not relish in potential wasted and lives unlived, and so it gives Jane something that she desired so much: Relief. Therefore, she dies quietly, while the hive screams and rages around her, and for just a second before she crumbles into the ground, the Archivist thinks he can see a smile on what’s left of her lips. 

As she hits the ground, however, the worms come rushing in, and this time, they don’t hold back.

* * *

Creepy Murder Tunnels, Tim had called them, and now that he was actually down here, Martin was inclined to agree.

They made it out without problems after Jon had left; they saw the worms surrounding him, laying siege to him, but never quite going for the attack the way they had before, as if they were scared. So they ran, and made it without much difficulty to their destination, which was a spooky-looking trapdoor hidden in the far corner of one of their larger storerooms. Sasha knew the way, leading them despite the fear in her eyes. The worms in their way died screaming under the last of the gas in their fire extinguishers, so now that they are wandering the tunnels, they have nothing to defend themselves except for the corkscrew Martin still clutches tightly in his hand, refusing to let go.

“They were down here,” Tim says, pointing at the few worms that still line the floors and congregate in corners and doorways. “Did they get in through here? Through the tunnels?” 

“I think so,” Sasha says, quietly. 

Martin lights the way with his flashlight, but the beam disappears in the oppressive darkness of the tunnel they’re walking through, far closer than it should. Martin feels like something is watching them, like they’re not alone down there, and he looks over his shoulder more than once to make sure no one is actually following them. There are just the worms, though, no shadow monster tailing them, no person with large hands and a shattered laugh, no … corpse coffins or haunted tape recorders or bone thieves, at least so far.

“Jon will be fine, Sash,” Tim says in a gentle, quiet voice. Sasha’s head whips around to face him, her long braids flying.

“I’m not worried about Jon, I’m worried about us!” she hisses at Tim.

“You’re not?” Tim asks, bewildered. “But I thought …” 

“What?” Sasha stops in her tracks, shining her light into Tim’s face. He squints at her, and then her face falls. “Oh my God, Timothy Stoker. Tell me you didn’t really think that.”    
“Think what?” Martin asks.

“Tim’s thinking that I’m dating Jon!” Sasha says, just staring at Tim, eyes wide. 

“Well, what was I supposed to think? You’re always staying late, locking yourself into his office, doing who knows what in there!” Tim throws up his hands. “It’s the logical conclusion!” 

“Tim …” Sasha says, lowering the flashlight beam away from his face. “Are you … jealous?” 

“Uhm, guys …” Martin says. 

“Why would I be jealous?” Tim yells.

“Guys …” 

“You’re being weird!” 

“Guys!” Martin screams, and it finally goes through to them, and they turn around just in time to see the gigantic wave of worms rolling towards them.

“Run!” Sasha screams, and they do. They take off, feet hitting the stone floor of the tunnels, while behind them, the worms come closer and closer and closer.

“What the hell did Jon do?” Tim yells as they run, but he gets no answer. Martin has never been much of a runner, but now he’s running for the third time from these horrific worms, so he runs, and he pushes himself, and even though his lungs feel like they might burst and his feet might just about fall off and there’s a stabbing pain in his sides, he runs. And runs. And runs. 

Martin doesn’t know what happened to Tim and Sasha. They were there, right in front of him, and then he looked back over his shoulder to see where the worms were, and then, when he turned back, they were gone. But there was a door, slightly ajar, just beckoning for him to hide inside the room it led to, so he did. It’s a storeroom, the door almost as heavy as the one in his makeshift fortress above, so he’s positive it will protect him from any worm-related attacks. He presses his back to the door and tries to catch his breath and take stock of where he is and what he’s got at his disposal. 

There’s the corkscrew, of course, in his right hand, because he’s never ever letting go of that thing again, at least not as long as there’s still worms in this place. He dropped the flashlight while they were running, so it’s dark, but he’s got his phone still in his pocket, and the battery is still high charge, so he should be fine in using the flashlight function for a while, just to get the lay of the land, so to speak. He still has all of his limbs and there’s no sharp pain of a worm eating through his skin, which is good. When he rushed in here, he’s certain that he fell over a box of files, so maybe this is another room that the Archive uses to store some of their discredited statements.

Thinking he’s safe for now, Martin makes his next mistake: He does turn on the flashlight function on his phone to illuminate the room. And he screams. 

She’s sitting in a chair, slumped over slightly, looking as if she just fell asleep in there, if it weren’t for her chest, torn through by bullet wounds, blood long since darkened to a rusty black staining her lacy white blouse and the pink cardigan that looks like she might have knitted it herself. The glasses have fallen from her face into her lap, and her hair is still there and pulled into a tight bun, but her face,  _ oh, _ her face … 

Martin lets out a whimper. Of course he has wondered what happened to Gertrude Robinson, same as everyone else working at the Institute, and of course he, too, was sure that there was no way that she was still alive, but to see her like this, right in front of his eyes, makes him want to cry or throw up or possibly both. He looks again, though, because there’s something in her hands, and he sees that it’s a tape recorder. Martin wants to get it, he really does, to see what tape is in there, to find out what was so important that she spent her last seconds alive recording it, clutching it in her hand as tightly as Martin is clutching the corkscrew, but that would mean breaking her skeletal fingers that are wrenched so tightly around the recorder, and he really doesn’t want to have to do that. Instead, he scoots as close to the door and as far away from the corpse of Getrude Robinson as possible, and waits.

And waits. 

* * *

The blaring fire alarm pulls Jon back into consciousness, awareness suddenly spreading out like a lightning strike. He can feel it all, knows exactly what is happening around him, but he only focuses on those three people he loves the most. They’re safe. He knows it. 

Slowly, Jon pushes himself upward; he’s lying among an endless avalanche of worm corpses, dead and lifeless, shriveled and dry, killed by the CO2 that must have flooded the Archives when Sasha and Tim made it to the manual release. Inspecting his arms and legs, he’s surprised to find that there are no new worm wounds on them, except for the very first ones he received right at the beginning of the attack, which have now healed enough that they already look like the light-colored scars he’s had before the whole time travel thing. Softly, he traces his finger across the one closest to his ankle; there’s fewer of them now than they were last time, and he’s not sad about it, but there’s a pang of pain in his heart that he is confused about for a second, until he realizes that he has missed the scars. They had become a part of him, and even though he thought he had hated them, they were a part of what had made him the Archivist, and now that he has them back, he feels more … whole. He feels betrayed, by that, because he doesn’t particularly want to be marked by fear, but it is what it is, and he cannot change his feelings. 

The corpse of Jane Prentiss lies still amongst the worms, one of her arms still outstretched towards Jon. When he gets up and steps around the piles of dead worms, he makes sure to stay away from her. The apprehension is unimpeachable, the revulsion ever-lasting, but at least he feels bad about it, about her. 

Jon walks up the stairs, slowly limping. His leg still hurts, despite the surface of his skin being mostly healed, and he’s sure the pain will stick around for a while. 

The foyer to the Institute is deserted, as it should be; Rosie’s bag is still there, behind her desk, in accordance to the fire alarm protocols that no one but her would actually follow, and the sound of the alarm itself echoes through the large, empty hall. It’s wrong, this emptiness, reminding Jon of the screams and gunshots ringing through it, of running and tunnels and fear and hatred and then … nothing. The endless nothingness, the black void, this not-knowing, it almost hurts. He tries to look back unto those final days before the door and there is nothing, and it’s wrong, and he shouldn’t be there, and Jon feels like the worms are crawling all over him again, and suddenly he’s on the ground, trying to breathe and calm his racing heart, but all he sees is black, an endless oblivion. He shouldn’t be here. He should not be here.

After what seems like hours, there’s a hand on his shoulder, small and cold, and Jon looks up to see Sasha’s face.

“Come on,” she says, “We’re okay. It’s over.” 

“Is everyone all right?” he asks, even though he already knows, because he needs to hear it, and she squeezes his shoulder.

“They are. A bit shaken up, but physically fine.” She holds her other hand out to him. He takes it, and she pulls him up onto his feet, until he’s standing, shakily, but if he leans against Sasha he can walk, and that’s what matters. 

“We did it, then,” he says. “Did … did Martin find …?” 

“Yeah,” Sasha confirms. “They’re sending in the ECDC soon, and after that the police will go in to retrieve her body.” 

“I’m scared, Sasha,” Jon says, his voice barely audible. There’s just so much, and it’s all his fault, but it’s not, because it’s all Jonah’s fault, really, and all he can do is wish with all his heart that this time will be better, but instead of the large strides he wanted to take, it feels more like baby steps. One step forward, one back. Table destroyed, but Prentiss attacked. Maybe he should have stopped it, back there in Martin’s apartment building, or maybe even earlier. He could have. It would have been entirely possible. But instead, he let her come, because the unknown is terrifying to him, because he can’t see what Jonah is planning, because what if the alternative to Jane Prentiss would have been so much worse? Not knowing is no longer something that Jon can stand, it’s killing him, this uncertainty, this anxiety about the future that is ripping him apart at the seams.

They walk out of the door side by side, Sasha’s arm the only thing that keeps Jon from falling over.

“Oh, thank God,” he hears Martin say just before he sees him. A man in an ECDC hazmat suit sprays them both down with something that does slightly resemble the gas from the fire extinguishers, and Sasha coughs as she inhales some of it. When he is done, Jon can finally see all the Institute staff standing huddled into groups on the street, talking in hushed voices to each other, while the street itself is blocked off by police and the ECDC. For a split-second, Jon thinks he sees Basira, but then his eyes fall upon Martin, standing as close to the door as the hazmat-suit people allow him, a tear in his woolen sweater and a cut on his forehead, looking anxiously upon Jon and Sasha. 

“Told you he’d be alright!” Tim appears behind Martin, a tired smile on his lips. He looks relieved, but there is mistrust there that is all too familiar. Jon suppresses a sigh; he will have to deal with that sooner rather than later, otherwise Tim will hate him again. Perhaps Tim’s hate for Jon is fate, but if there’s any way at all Jon can keep being his friend, he will do everything to achieve that. 

“I was worried,” Martin says, and Jon smiles. 

“I know,” he says. “I’m fine.” 

It really was Basira, before; she now stands a few meters behind Tim, giving orders to a fellow police officer before resuming what appears to be an argument with an ECDC employee. Jon knows he’s staring, but he can’t help it. He hasn’t seen her in so long. He longs to talk to her, to have a real conversation about books and supernatural things and normal things, a conversation that is not tinged with bitterness and shame and guilt. He’s been thinking about her, and about Daisy, of course, and has come to the conclusion that the best course of action would be to keep them as far away from the Institute as possible, but Jon is a selfish person at heart, and he misses his friends and wants them by his side, even though he knows what they will become. He misses that closeness with Daisy, after the coffin; making half-hearted jokes and complaining about the Archers and sitting together, not saying anything, but not needing to, because there was that companionship there that can only come from two people having gone through hell together.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Martin asks, clearly noticing Jon’s distraction. Tim looks over his shoulder, searching for whatever Jon is staring at. 

“I think I need to sit down,” Jon says with a weak chuckle, and suddenly they’re all fussing over him like he’s a sick child and they’re his worried grandmother, except he was never sickly and his grandmother never worried too much. Sasha and Martin help him sit down, while Tim asks around for a bottle of water, and Jon wishes he could tell him what he actually needs is a statement, but he can’t, because Tim doesn't know but he will soon, if all goes well, and there he goes, spiraling again. He half-expects Helen to show up and mock him until he remembers that Michael is still alive and Helen is still scared of cramped hallways and winding paths. 

Sasha sits down next to Jon, putting her head on his shoulder, which must be a very uncomfortable position, but it helps, because it grounds him in the here and now. Martin sits down on his other side, radiating warmth and safety, and all Jon wants to do is pull him in for a kiss. 

They watch as the ECDC people suit up in bulky green hazmat suits. Jon sees Jordan Kennedy, helping another employee put on their suit, and he sees Basira, moving closer to the door now that the ECDC is mostly gone, right hand resting on her gun. 

Tim comes back with four water bottles, which he passes out without saying a word. He sits down next to Martin, joining them in their watching, as more police arrive and start to interrogate some of the Institute staff, most of whom probably don’t even know what all the fuss is about. Jon sees Elias fluttering about, a fake smile plastered on his lips that doesn’t even begin to reach his eyes. Smug bastard is probably congratulating himself on such a masterful play, maybe even planning out his next move, scheming on how to get Daisy to suspect Jon so she can hunt him down, how he can use this discovery of Gertrude’s body for himself. 

Basira walks over to them; but she’s eyeing Sasha, not Jon. Sasha takes her head from Jon’s shoulder, straightening her back as she notices. Jon told her everything in those late night sessions, especially about Basira and Daisy, but he knows that Sasha doesn’t know what they look like. It’s fine. She’ll know soon enough.

“Police Constable Basira Hussain,” Basira introduces herself, looking straight at Sasha, not sparing anyone else even a glance. “Can I ask you some questions about what happened here today?” 

“Of course,” Sasha replies and gets up. She looks back at Jon, one eyebrow raised, and he gives a small nod. They walk a few steps away, far enough that no one will overhear them. 

“Martin,” Jon says after a few seconds pause, “Would you mind trying to find me a blanket? I’m … cold, for some reason.” It’s a lie, of course, but Martin springs up immediately, eager to be of use and helping.

“Yes!” he says, “It’s probably the shock …” And then he’s gone, bothering random EMTs about police officers. 

“Well played,” Tim says. He doesn’t look at Jon, but has adopted a thousand-yard stare, one that will probably stay with him for a while. Jon makes a mental note to suggest therapy, then thinks that maybe Tim will hate him even more for that. 

“He worries so much,” Jon says. “Sometimes I think he’s going to give too much of himself away in an effort to help people.” 

“That’s not what you wanted to talk to me about, though.” Tim’s tone is even, emotionless, but Jon can feel the agitation simmer, just under the surface, threatening to bubble up. 

“No,” he answers, and lets all the exhaustion he feels seep into his voice. “You wanted to know things.” 

“I did. I do,” Tim says. He turns the water bottle around in his hands, fidgeting. 

“Unfortunately, I will need some time, Tim,” Jon says. Tim’s head snaps around.

“If you think you’re getting out of this,” he says, “It’s not gonna happen.” 

“No, you’re right,” Jon says. “I mean I physically need to recover before I have that kind of conversation.” 

“You told Sasha,” Tim says. “Was it so horrible?” 

“Yes,” Jon says. “It was.”

They’re quiet for a minute, watching as Elias attempts to calm down a hysteric Hannah, while Martin searches for someone else to bother.

“Sasha cornered me after Martin was besieged in his apartment. She didn’t really give me a choice. She can be quite headstrong, our Sasha.” 

“Yeah,” Tim agrees, and there it is, the hint of a smile, and Jon can breathe a little bit easier. 

“Set a date, then,” Jon says, “A week from now, maybe? After work. I promise I’ll tell you everything.” 

“Everything?” Tim asks, and Jon nods.

“I’m done not trusting people,” he says.

“But you’re not gonna tell Martin.” It’s not a question, but a statement. 

“Martin is … more difficult,” Jon sighs. “You’ll understand once you know everything.” 

“You want to tell him, though.” 

“More than anything else in this world,” Jon says, and he means it. He misses Martin so much it feels like a dagger in his heart, twisting around and around every time he thinks about Martin or sees him or hears his voice. 

“And what about me?” Tim’s voice breaks a little. “You don’t seem particularly … eager.”

Jon sighs.

“I’m not,” he says, “I’m afraid you’re going to hate me.” 

Tim looks at him, for a while, then takes a sip from his water bottle and says: “We’ll see.” 

At night, the clock over the fridge ticks away the seconds, minutes, hours while the Archivist lies in a bed that is too soft and too warm, worrying that when he wakes up, the sounds of suffering and fear and pain will fill his ears once more, and he will have to deal with the fact that all of this has been a lucid dream, a wishful thought so violent in its vividness that it has swept him away.

Instead, the Archivist falls asleep and wanders through the world of dreams. There is the professor, standing in front of half a dozen faceless, eyeless creatures, each holding a still beating human heart in their hands, but the beat is not quite right, forming a cacophony of dissonant drums. If he looks to the left, he sees the desolate neon wasteland of the sleepless woman, but that dream is closed to him now. There’s the woman who chases blue-eyed deer and the man who wanders through fires unharmed, but only if he sets them himself, and the girl who catalogues last words and the child who wakes up each night in the front yard lying in a shallow grave they dug themself. The Archivist watches as Sarah Baldwin staples together her skin as the ghost hunter hides, afraid of being seen. He tries not to linger in her dream, tries to make it easier on her, but of course it doesn’t work, and she begs him to be quiet, to leave her alone, but he just stands and stares. 

Jon wakes to a world full of completely ordinary noise. Cars rush by and people yell and children play and dogs bark and ambulances howl and raindrops hit the window. He gets up, pours himself a bowl of cereal not because he needs it, but because he’s an adult and he’s been to the end of the world and back, so if he wants a bowl of pure sugar and carbs and milk, he will have it. The tea he makes tastes weak and stale and watery, but that’s fine, because he knows that in this very moment Jordan Kennedy is watching as people in hazmat suits push what is left of Jane Prentiss into a crematory chamber, and he knows when the flames engulf her completely, turning this particular tragedy into a pile of ashes. He knows that Sasha is still Sasha, and that she is currently in her apartment, searching for her umbrella, because she and Tim agreed to have breakfast together at a small cafe, on the condition that they only talk about normal, non-supernatural things. He knows that Martin is back in his apartment for the first time in months, taking in the spiderwebs that have formed in the corners of the rooms, making plans for how to get rid of them, and thinking about looking for a new apartment, one that has big windows with lots of sunlight for all the plants he’s going to get, and maybe even a gas range? 

There is hope. 

Jon sits at the coffee table and traces the pattern on the tablecloth as he thinks about Tim, about the statement he is going to extract from him. Will all that hatred come rushing in as the words rush out? Will he turn on his heel as soon as the compulsion ends and never speak to Jon again? Or will he attack Jon, like Melanie did, such a long time ago?    
How will he react knowing that even though he thought he died saving the world, his death had ultimately been for nothing? 

How does one even deal with the fact that their death has been completely pointless? That this ultimate sacrifice was not needed, not even in the slightest? You have purpose, you die for that purpose, and then somehow, you return back to life, only for the man you hate to tell you that there was never even a purpose to begin with. There was the revenge, for Tim, to burn the circus that took his brother to the ground, but if there’s one thing that Jon knows, it’s revenge, and that it doesn’t bring you peace. No, for peace, you have to work hard, and he’s still doing just that, he’s still trying, and he always will be trying. He hopes there will be a day in this future where he will sit at the window and look into the sky to look at a sunrise that he knows, with absolute certainty, will never look back at him. 

But for now, there is still a lot of work ahead of him.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, hmu on tumblr @talizorah or on twitter @tinybluepixels if you wanna talk!


	9. let me die still loving, and so, never die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two statements, one given freely, one not so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: claustrophobia, gun violence, darkness, worms (dead), coercion, compulsion, lack of free will, memory loss, manipulation, violent death, explosions, body horror

Click. 

The tape recorder starts spinning, around and around and around. The sound is, by now, almost comforting to Martin.

“Statement of … uh … Statement of Martin Blackwood, Assistant Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London … regarding, um, the … tunnels? The tunnels under the Institute.” 

He takes a shy step further down the tunnel. If he turns around, he can see a cone of light where he left the trapdoor open, not shining down as far as he’d hoped. Of course, he has his own trusty flashlight and enough batteries to last him a while, but the darkness in these tunnels still feels suffocating, like it’s pressing down on his shoulders and pushing him further into the ground, like it’s cutting him off from the world up above.

Six feet underground, Martin walks. He walks past the door where he found Gertrude’s body, now decorated with yellow-and-black police crime scene tape, his feet dragging through the corpses of the worms that still litter the floor. 

Martin knows Jane Prentiss is dead. A handsome man with an easy smile and kind eyes delivered an urn for them, for some reason, because apparently the ECDC didn’t know what to do with her remains, and they figured the Institute would have a use for it. Or an … interest. Martin held on to them for a little while before giving them to Jon, and he _ knew _ that they were hers. However, knowing doesn’t make wading through her worms any easier, and he fights down the panic bubbling up in his chest, the fear of being boxed in and trapped and besieged, and tells himself she is dead, and she is never coming back to life.

“I’m … down in the tunnels. I’ve decided I want to explore them,” he tells the tape recorder, cradling it in his left hand while holding the flashlight with his right, “I don’t even know why I’m recording this. Maybe I’ll die down here, and whoever finds my body can also find this tape, and know what happened to me.” 

Martin thinks of Jon. He imagines him listening to this, his brow furrowed adorably, the way he does when he’s disapproving of something. He thinks of the scars now dotting Jon’s legs, and, once again, just how lucky they were to make it out alive. 

“I stole the key from Elias’ desk. It wasn’t hard. He’s not particularly careful about keeping his office locked, and so far he hasn’t noticed that it’s missing, or at least he doesn’t suspect … me. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to explore the Institute, and I know it’s not right to steal things from your boss, but I just … needed to do it. I need to know what’s going on down here.” 

He feels watched. It’s not a particularly new feeling, as ever since he took the job down in the Archives, he always feels like someone is looking over his shoulder, watching his every move, knowing his thoughts, observing his actions. Of course, that is not normal for a workplace, but what  _ is _ normal in a place as spooky as the Institute? They were literally just attacked by a half-rotten worm zombie lady. His boss (whom he has a crush on) can apparently summon tape recorders whenever and wherever he wants to, and sometimes even when he doesn’t want to. Not to mention the fact that he has, right in front of Martin, freely admitted to not being human.

Martin has left ‘normal’ behind a long time ago.

“The Archives are weird, I guess. Being there is … weird. I’ve lived there for quite some time now, but they feel different now. Of course, they patched up the walls and cleaned out most of the worms, but sometimes I still find some dead ones, tucked away in a corner or lying in a box of statements, having eaten through the cardboard. Jon and Tim are still on leave, so it’s just me and Sasha, and Sasha is being weird, too. She seems more … withdrawn, more introspective, and she spends a good deal of time just sitting in her chair, staring at the wall, and chewing on a pencil. I don’t blame her, though. I just think maybe she should take a break, too.” 

There’s a door down here, looking just like the door he found Gertrude behind, and in true explorer fashion, Martin doesn’t hesitate one second before moving to open it. The handle gives way smoothly and without resistance, and Martin shines his flashlight into what appears to be just another storage room, if not for the giant circle of worms on the wall.

“There’s - Good Lord, there’s something weird in here. Okay, I’ll describe it as best I can. Most of the worms seem to have fallen off, but some are still sticking to the wall. They form a circle, like … a portal, almost? It looks like I could step through the wall and come out at another place entirely, but also like it’s not … finished? The stone … it seems wrong. Really wrong. I don’t want to touch it. I know I probably should, scientific methods, spirit of exploration and all that, but I really don’t want to, so I’m not going to, and you’re just going to have to deal with that, whoever you are. I don’t know. Maybe no one will ever listen to this. Anyway, the circle itself is maybe … ten feet in diameter? It’s very big, actually. I’m just going to … leave.” 

He does leave. 

The stairs appear out of nowhere, so suddenly that Martin almost falls down. They are narrow, winding down like stairs in a medieval castle tower, hewn out of cold stone. None of the steps are the same size and width; some of them are large and brittle, and some are narrow enough that Martin’s foot doesn’t fit onto them and he has to skip the step. 

“I’ve been on these steps for what feels like an eternity now,” he speaks into the recorder, “Surely they have to stop somewhere, right? There’s no way - Wait, there’s a wall. Why is there a wall right at the bottom of the stairs? Who would build something like that? That makes no sense.” 

Martin does end up touching this wall: It’s solid stone, cold as ice to the touch. He could swear, though, that it hadn’t been there just a couple of seconds before, that instead of the wall, there were more steps, leading even further down, but now the way is blocked off, and he has no choice but to backtrack.

The way up seems shorter. A lot shorter than it’s got any right to be, but Martin is still out of breath when he reaches the first tunnel again. But it doesn’t look right.

“What the …” he says, “This isn’t right. Maybe … maybe I missed this landing when I first walked down the stairs, because this isn’t the tunnel just under the Archives. There’s no doors, and it doesn’t go in a straight line. Instead, it winds down, and it looks like there’s a crossroads ahead, and there’s no light from where I left the trapdoor open. I’m … going to turn around, and … They’re gone.” 

The stairs are gone. Instead, there is a wall of smooth, packed earth, dark and slightly moist, smelling of graves and decay. Martin touches it with one careful fingertip, and it doesn’t give. It’s there, it’s solid, and it just appeared out of thin air. 

“I should be terrified,” he tells the tape recorder. “But I’m just … curious, I guess. Have I really resigned myself to this life of strangeness that much? I didn’t even believe in the supernatural when I started working here, I was just so glad to get a job, any job, that I was willing to deal with the nutjobs at the Magnus Institute. But now … I guess I’m one of them. A wall just appeared where there was none before, and I just see it as another piece of the puzzle.” 

Martin turns around again, because there is no other way to go, and walks steadily towards the crossroads with large strides. 

“It’s a large puzzle, this one. Maybe it’s more like a web than a puzzle ... Like that thing they made you do in school, uh … mind maps? Yeah, that’s it. The Institute is in the middle. And then Jon is a big point, obviously. I think Sasha branches off from Jon, because it’s clear that these two know something that I don’t. I’d wager Tim might be in on it, too, but I’m not so sure about him as I am about Sasha. Then there’s Elias, and he’s connected to Jon, and I think Rosie might be connected too? But who knows. Gertrude … she was something. People just don’t get shot over nothing.” 

Martin reaches the crossroads and shines his flashlight into each of the tunnels branching off at this point. They all look identical; cold walls of grey stone and a relentless blackness filling the air. Some time in his past, someone told him that if you want to find your way out of a maze, you always go right, so he picks the path to his right and hopes it’s the one that fate wants him to take.

“Gertrude is why I’m down here, actually. Jon seems to treat her death like it’s nothing, as if finding the rotting, murdered corpse of your predecessor is a daily occurance. Elias, too. Of course, there’s the police, but they seem almost as bored with the case as Jon and Elias are. It seems like I’m the only one who actually cares that Gertrude Robinson was murdered, and her killer is still out there. 

“Yeah, I like Jon, it’s not a secret anymore, I guess, but I think he is suspect number one, unfortunately. Which would mean I have a huge crush on a murderer, and even that isn’t making it any better. It’s getting ridiculous at this point … I can barely concentrate on work when he’s in the room because I keep focusing on his hands and how pretty they are … These hands might have pulled the trigger. Three times. That’s not … inconsequential. You don’t just shoot someone three times on accident. That was premeditated. That was … personal.” 

There’s a door here, heavy and grey. When Martin opens it, there’s nothing behind it, just a wall, as if someone bricked it up in a hurry. He closes the door again with a sigh.

“The next suspect is Elias. Not for any particular reason other than that he’s being weird and vague, especially to the police, but that isn’t new. He’s … there’s something off about him, though. Not just because Jon hates him with a passion and this hate has bled over to me, but he’s also … not right. It’s his eyes, I think. They’re … too piercing. Makes no sense, I know. But nothing down here does, I’m afraid.” 

He sees it, then, and his heart does a little leap in his chest: The light shining down from the trapdoor. It is as he just said: Nothing down here makes sense. The trapdoor shouldn’t be here, because everything else is missing. The door to Gertrude’s storage room is gone, and so is the one with the worm circle, so maybe this is a trap, or a mirage like the tunnels are a kind of desert that Martin has been walking around in way too long, or maybe it really is the way out. 

“I found what I think is the exit,” he says. “I can see the light shining down. Can’t say I’m not relieved, but I think … I wasn’t scared. No. That’s just how the tunnels are, I think. I can’t believe I accepted this so easily. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be wary. When … if … I go down here again, I’m going to need to take more supplies. Pen and paper, to make a map, if such a thing is even possible. Maybe some food and water.” 

It  _ is  _ the trap door, and it’s open, and he can see the shelves and the stacks of statements and the boxes just behind it. Martin climbs the ladder and emerges into the safe, light, and dry Archives. The light is still on, and a look to the clock on the wall tells him it’s almost midnight and he really should be getting home, to the new apartment he is now renting, to the warm bed waiting for him, far away from worms and tunnels and potentially murderous bosses. So he locks the trap door behind him, hides the key in one of the boxes, and goes to put on his coat, only to quite literally run into Tim.

“What the fuck,” Tim says when they’ve recovered. “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m not the one who is supposed to be on medical leave!” Martin complains, and Tim holds up his hands in defeat. 

“Fine,” he says, “I have a clandestine, secret meeting with Jon at midnight.” 

“Why?” Martin asks, suspicion creeping into his voice. 

“I don’t really know myself,” Tim says. “Guess I’m about to find out, though.” 

“Right,” Martin says, “I suppose this meeting is private?” 

“Very private, I’m afraid,” Tim says with a shrug. “Don’t want to spook Jon. I’m surprised that he actually agreed to this.” 

“You know what,” Martin says, trying not to sound too bitter, “I don’t really want to know.” 

“Good,” Tim says. Martin pouts a bit as he puts on his coat, checking if he has his keys in his pocket where they belong. 

He is wrapping the scarf around his throat when Tim asks: “What  _ were _ you doing down here, Martin?” His tone is almost disinterested, but too much so, and it’s very clear that he is actually very interested. Martin sighs. He likes Tim. They’re friends. And no matter how suspicious he is of his fellow colleagues right now, he really doesn’t think that it was Tim who killed Gertrude.

“I … may have been exploring the tunnels,” he says eventually, thinking that there is no reason not to tell him. “Don’t tell Jon.” 

Tim is stunned for a bit, but then a slow smile spreads across his lips, only the slightest bit sinister. 

“I won’t,” he says, “If you take me with you next time.” 

“Who says there’s even going to be a next time!” Martin exclaims, but Tim just laughs.

“Oh, Martin, Martin, Martin, don’t kid yourself,” he says and claps a hand onto Martin’s shoulder. “We wouldn’t work here if we weren’t all too goddamn curious.” 

Martin thinks about that for a moment. It’s true, unfortunately, and it emcompasses everything he deliberated about while down there: He’s too curious to stop, and yes, it is something he shares with the other assistants. He just … needs to  _ know _ . 

“Fine,” he says, “You can come with me next time.” 

“Yes! You won’t regret it!” Tim looks genuinely excited.

“Just … not anytime soon,” Martin says. “It’s been an exhausting day, and I think I will need some time before I can go down there again.”    
“That’s okay,” Tim says, “Just let me know whenever.”

“Yeah, I will,” Martin says and moves towards the door. “Now, I’ll need to get home. You have fun with Jon.” 

The tape recorder clicks off.

* * *

Home.

Jon hopes for it, yearns: The ending where he will make it home, and there will be nothing standing in his way, nothing keeping him from it, nothing out to get him. The beast inside him finally sated, no hunger, no starvation, no fear. 

For now, however, the air condition unit in the corner rattles as Jon sets out two glasses on the table. The tape recorder already lies ready, even though he hasn’t put it there. The room is cold, the heat of the day having receded now that night has fallen, and Jon sits down with a sigh and stares at his watch. 

Sasha wanted to stay. She stopped him, earlier, saying she would like to be there when he told Tim the truth, but Jon had refused. No, this is something he has to do alone. But how to do it? He’s fed, a young woman whom he found crying at a bar and who, without Jon having to use even a hint of compulsion, told him all about her fall under the ice, the water welcoming her in perfect breathable warmth, until it solidified in her lungs and left her unable to call out and scream for help. So there is enough power there, enough to pull the statement from Tim and make him remember, but Jon doesn’t want to, and hates himself for it. He thinks of Tim at the Unknowing, those last couple of seconds, the mania in his eyes as he stared at the detonator, until his thumb finally pushed down. And then there was  _ nothing _ .

Wouldn’t it be a kindness to leave him to his ignorance? Jon knows better than anyone else in this world that knowledge is a curse. 

In the end, it’s Tim who will have to make that choice. He arrives fifteen minutes early, looking determined and focused, his all-black ensemble matching the deep circles under his eyes.

“Talk,” is all he says, no greeting, no pleasantries, no nothing. He just stands there, ominous, in the doorway to Jon’s office.

Jon sighs. It wouldn’t be right to keep this from him. To have this power of giving him back his memories, of pulling the things that happened in the other timeline back into this one, to offer him explanations and reasonings, and just decide that it’s wrong, just because he doesn’t want to do it? No, this is Tim’s choice, this is his crossroads, and he has to decide which path to take. 

“Time travel, Tim,” he says, face completely serious.

“Fuck off,” Tim answers, not wasting a breath.

“I mean it,” Jon says. Tim finally moves, pulling the chair away from the desk with a screech, sitting down, and getting as close to Jon as possible.

“Why?” Tim asks. Jon raises an eyebrow.

“Why time travel? Let’s see. I lived through this once already, fucked up at every turn, all my friends died or hated me, and then the apocalypse happened, and then I walked through a door and ended up in 2014. But why? You tell me.” 

“Start at the beginning,” Tim says, and Jon does.

When he’s done, Tim leans back in his chair, eyes staring straight ahead in a thousand-yard stare that equals Jon’s own. The tape recorder still runs, the static filling the silence between them. Tim is playing with a pencil he produced from somewhere, and Jon recognizes it as the same one Lydia Halligan used to draw her fractals. The room is cold, the artificial chill sinking deep into Jon’s bones, and he shivers. 

“So ... “ Tim trails off. Jon looks at him until he continues. “You’re not … dating Sasha?” 

It’s enough to break the dam, and Jon bursts into uncontrollable laughter. 

“I just told you,” he manages to squeeze out eventually, “that I only made it through the apocalypse because of Martin Blackwood, love of my life, and you’re asking me … if I’m … dating Sasha …”

Tim isn’t laughing, so Jon forces himself to sober up a bit, enough to look him in the eye and say: “Tim, I am not dating Sasha. I promise.” 

Tim lets out a deep breath and there it is - that tiny sliver of a smile, offered up like an olive branch, a gift of peace. 

“Good,” he finally says. 

“There is … one other thing,” Jon says, letting the words out of his mouth slowly, still not sure if this is the right way to go about it. But it just wouldn’t be  _ fair _ , would it?

“What is it?” Tim asks. The intensity about him has disappeared, faded into a sweet complacency and acceptance. This man has just heard that a time traveler has returned to stop his death and an apocalypse, but it is the reassurance that Jon isn’t in love with Sasha that makes the hostility dissipate. And then, the Eye drops some very important information on Jon: Tim will need a moment, so Jon sits back, and just watches as Tim stares off into nothingness, having forgotten his own question, as he remembers all the strange things that have happened around the Institute. All the things that made him doubt in the first place.

The sound of tape recorders clicking on one by one accompanied by the voice of Elias Bouchard fills Tim’s head, and he wonders, and questions, and deliberates; he cannot explain, then, and that is what scares him. He doesn’t want to believe, Jon knows that. He sees himself in Tim; rationalizing away the obvious, pushing the festering doubt into the tiniest crevices of his mind, trying desperately to find rational explanations for things that are, by their very nature, irrational, and yet, knowing deep down that it is all true, that he has been kidding himself, that in this moment, he needs to step forward and let go of all his coping mechanisms. Jon knows as Tim sees Danny’s face, skin slack, being ripped off, over and over again, until it swims together in a horrible montage of blood and bone and flesh and muscle and sinew and  _ skin _ , until Tim covers his face with his hands in a futile effort to make it stop, to have it end, to not have to see it anymore, but of course, it’s all inside his own head. No one can escape their own thoughts. 

Jon takes out the form they use for statements and fills in Tim’s name at the top.

“I can give you your memories back,” he says, “If you want them.” 

Tim looks up; a spark of uncertainty glimmers in his eyes. 

“Is that … what you did to Sasha?” he asks. There’s just a hint of curiosity, but it is paired with a sliver of fear, and that is enough for the Eye to signal that  _ yes, this is what it wants, Archivist, _ and suddenly, Jon’s hand is moving without him making the conscious choice to do so. Yet another tape recorder, summoned from nothingness, turns on all on its own. “I’m … I’m not … Jon, I’m not sure …” 

“Statement of Timothy Stoker, Assistant Archivist, regarding his own death in another timeline. Statement taken direct from subject, 23rd of August, 2016, during the second attempt. Statement begins.” 

Tim’s mouth opens, but no sound comes forth. His eyes widen in irrational fear and shock as he slowly lifts up his right hand and stares at it, blinking once, and twice, three times, before he looks up at Jon again and starks to talk.

“The flash, the explosion … It hurt, for only a second or two. Then it was over. Reality rewrote itself, and I was right there in the middle of it, putting it right back in order. That it took my own death to do so? Not much of a choice. What better way to go is there? To go out in that blaze of glory that all the stories talk about? Of course, I didn’t actually want to die. But I also didn’t care very much at that point.

“You know, when I started working here, I was bitter and in mourning and I wanted to hate the world. It was only natural I gravitated towards the guy who hated it as much as I did. But there was something else, underneath that facade of the academic tired of supernatural nutjobs that you liked so much, and that was fear. I knew you’d seen it too, that deep undercurrent running under the world we would like so much to be normal and simply ordinary. I knew you had your own Grimaldi, your own dead brother, and out of all the idiots in Research, you might have been the one who would understand me the most. 

“Of course, I was always an easy-going person, and I wasn’t about to abandon that entirely, so I made other friends, and easily, too, but I always came back to you. Were you ever grateful? I don’t think you know, yourself. 

“I told Martin, when I made that statement about my brother, that there was never really any hope for me. And it’s true, now even more so than it was back then. I came to the Institute for revenge, and I got it in the end. Did it bring me joy? Satisfaction? Not really. I’m far too hopeless for any of that.

“I came to the Institute to find out about the … thing that took my brother away. Instead, I got swept away in the craziness, got complacent, until … well, until you. And the Archives. And Gertrude, and the worms, and the cops, and  _ Elias _ , … until this place took Sasha away from me. I think that’s what hit me the most, to be honest. Sure, my boss was a murderer and almost certainly an evil mastermind, but the fact that I had lost Sasha and hadn’t even noticed … It ate me up from the inside, and there was one thought that echoed in my mind: It’s my fault. I did this. I could have saved her. I could have stopped her. Could, could, could. But I didn’t. She died, and she got replaced, and I didn’t even  _ know _ . It shattered me like glass.

“I don’t think I ever hated you, you know. It was more like … I placed all the hatred I felt on you, because you were an easy target, the easy way out; it didn’t matter that technically, it wasn’t your fault, that you knew just as much as I did. 

“When Martin told me about the Unknowing, and how you had kept it from me, I was angry. I still don’t know exactly why you didn’t tell me. Was it because you shared Elias’s opinion that I was volatile and dangerous and would mess the whole thing up? Or because you genuinely cared about me and feared that it would send me into a downward spiral of hate and destruction? Maybe you simply forgot to tell me, what with all your travels to China and America and God knows where else … But I felt left behind. And it was such a personal thing, too. The circus, I realized, had never let me go. Some part of my soul, however small, was still in that theater of stone, listening as the music swirls around the room as I’m watching the …  _ performance _ they put on just for me. Trapped, forever, even as I walked around town and did my stupid file organizing and drank Martin’s tea and cursed your name with every breath. I let it go, let it disappear, but it still had its claws buried into my skin, ripping and tearing it to shreds, poisoning my mind and my thoughts. So, yeah, a whole bunch of plastic explosives seemed like a good thing to fix that. 

“I don’t … it’s not clear. It’s a swirl of red and white, a shimmering of lights, a laugh and a song and a dance. I can’t pin it down, even now. The only clear moment I had during the whole Unknowing was when I had the detonator in my hand. I can still feel it, now. There’s two separate realities in my mind, overlaying each other like a double exposure on a photo, but you can’t focus on just one; they run together like wet watercolor, mixing and making something entirely new. The detonator was cool to the touch, and smooth, and it fit my hand like it was made for me. I’m a bit disappointed the button wasn’t red, though. I always thought buttons like that should be red. They always are, in the movies.

“I already told you, it only hurt for a second or so. I was dead before my body could fully register the pain. You know, death isn’t so bad. And I hated myself enough that I thought I didn’t deserve to live, that this was my punishment, for … for Sasha. Maybe, if my thoughts had been fully clear, I would have been more afraid, but there was nothing. Death isn’t scary; surviving is far worse. The only thing that scares us about death is that we don’t know what comes after. Our brains cannot fathom an everlasting nothingness, so we make up stories and belief systems to comfort us that yes, there is something waiting for us, that we won’t just be lost in a void for all eternity and longer. I was always fine with not knowing, however. You don’t … need to know … everything.” 

“Statement ends,” Jon says. Immediately, as the words slip past his lips, he feels exhaustion sweeping him up like a wave, and he drops the pencil he was holding onto the table. Tim isn’t looking much better, face in his hands and breathing hard. Fear is emanating off of him in pulses of power, and Jon soaks it up in a futile effort to regain his strength, but it’s not enough; his vision blurs and then goes black entirely.

A heartbeat, two, three. Jon is pulled back into consciousness. Not much time has passed, and Tim is still sitting on the chair, curled up like a child, as silent tears run down his face. He doesn’t even bother wiping them away. 

“I never gave you permission,” he says, voice quiet and hard and broken. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon answers, and it’s true and he means it, but Tim just clicks his tongue and shakes his head. 

“I don’t want to hear it,” he says. “It was for nothing. All of it was pointless. The world ended anyway.” 

“But ..., “ Jon says, but he loses his train of thought and closes his eyes. He remembers the screams, the fear seeping into every corner of the world, the eye watching over everything, and he knows that if Timothy Stoker could have made his choice all on his own, he would have chosen to sacrifice himself anyway. “I’m ... not sure ...” He remembers walking, step after step after endless step. A hand, large and dry and warm, holding his. His past and future haunts him, echoes through his soul and defines every part of him. There’s a house. There’s a man. There’s an eye. There is darkness, far and wide and eternal, a devastating void, and at the end, there is a door.

Jon opens his eyes.

“Tim,” he starts to say, and finally, Tim’s head snaps around and their eyes meet. 

“You don’t have to live with it,” Tim says. His voice is cold, filled with that very same hatred that Jon feared so much would return. 

“I do, though,” he answers.

“So what?” Tim asks, “You superimpose your suffering on everyone else? You force us to remember so you won’t have to solve your problems on your own?” 

“It’s not -” Jon says, but Tim interrupts him.

“Is this fun for you? Does your little Eye tell you to do this? Do you enjoy this?” He stands up, abruptly, throwing his hands up in the air. 

“You wanted to know,” Jon says. He’s too tired to defend himself, but he needs to; the overwhelming desire to be loved, to be admired, it’s still there, and it guides his hand in everything he does. The vow to make it better, to not fuck everything up this time, it sits there in the back of his mind, festering and pulsing in pain, telling him: You failed, you failed, you failed, he hates you again. Jon remembers the little things: A succulent plant on his desk, a hand squeezing his, a piece of chocolate cake, a heartfelt apology. Shared pastries and discussions over tea, amused looks and ugly Christmas sweaters, wild stories of dating lives and thinly veiled jealousy. Gone. 

“Not like this!” Tim is yelling now, getting as close to Jon as he can without actually touching him. 

“What was I supposed to do?” Jon says, too exhausted to raise his voice. “You wanted to know. Now you do.” 

“But ... not like this.” 

Tim backs off, then, though not out of mercy, but of the same exhaustion that weighs Jon’s limbs down like lead. He massages his temples, eyes closed against the stark neon light of the office. 

“I’m not coming to work tomorrow,” Tim says, and it’s not a request. His voice is quiet and dark and dangerous. “And probably not until I physically have to.” 

“Alright,” Jon says, because what is he supposed to say? “You should talk to Sasha, though.” 

“Sasha ...” Tim says, until he trails off. He stares into space for a second, then asks: “How ... is she? Dealing with all of this, I mean?” 

Jon sighs. 

“Not too badly,” he says, “A bit insulted that the only person to recognize that something was wrong was Melanie, whom she only met once. Otherwise? Surprisingly well.” 

“Did you think I was going to react the same?” Tim asks.

“Honestly? No. Sasha was always much more suited to this world than you.” 

“Thanks,” Tim says, a tiny bit of his old sarcasm returning.

“It wasn’t meant as an insult, Tim,” Jon says. He feels his eyelids getting heavier and all he wants is that dreamless sleep that he will, as always, be denied.

“I know,” Tim says. 

“We destroyed the table, if it makes you feel better,” Jon says. “Burned it. Killed the Not-Them.” 

“Good. She’s safe, then.” Tim sways a bit, but catches himself.

“As safe as anyone can be these days,” Jon whispers. “Go home, Tim. Sleep.” 

“I don’t think I can,” Tim chokes out, but he leaves, stopping once to look over his shoulder at Jon, who sits at his desk frozen like a statue of ice, before leaving, heavy steps on the stairs echoing through the empty Archives. 

“What is happening to me?” Jon asks, not sure if anyone is even listening. He feels the thoughts running through his brain, but he cannot grasp any of them. He considers just falling asleep right here at his desk, but he probably needs to at least make it to the cot that still stands in the storeroom and hopefully still smells a little bit of Martin, even though the ECDC hosed the entire room down with CO2, and he’s almost about to stand up and make his way down there, when the phone rings. 

He stops in his tracks, immediately. Of course he _ knows _ who’s at the other end. He almost considered letting it ring until she gets tired of this and hangs up on her own, but he knows she will find a way to contact him anyway. Still, this is new, this hasn’t happened before, and that scares him. Jon doesn’t want her anywhere near his assistants, his loved ones. His hand hovers over the phone, debating on whether to pick it up or not. She is not one to give up. If he doesn’t pick up, there will be something else she will try, and it rings, and it rings, and he finally picks it up.

“Still human enough to be scared?” she asks in lieu of a greeting, and he gulps.

“It appears so,” he says, “What do you want, Annabelle?” 

She laughs her quiet laugh, and says: “It’s not about what  _ I _ want.” 

“There has to be a reason,” Jon says, “Or are you just toying with me?” 

“I’m not,” she says. “There’s a big storm coming, Archivist. Jonathan. I just wanted to warn you. Call it ... a courtesy. You don’t know who’s watching. Don’t know who’s listening. I see the way you cut the strings and weave them together, anew. I see new patterns forming where there shouldn’t be any. You need to be careful you don’t get stuck in your own web.” 

The words he really wants to say are stuck in his throat, and he cannot get them out, as much as he tries. He chokes on them, desperately trying to breathe around them, until he gives up.

“Don’t call me again,” he says instead, hanging up the phone with a satisfying click.

Nothing about this is good. Jon has changed things, and it has only become worse. With a stifled sob, he collapses back into the chair and lets the tears flow freely, almost relieved to feel them running down his cheeks, a humiliating but comforting reminder of the last shreds of humanity that haven’t quite managed to slip through his fingers. He thinks of Martin and Sasha and Tim and Gerry and Helen and Daisy and Basira and Melanie and Georgie and Gertrude, and he hopes, and he prays, to do better. 

There is no way he will allow himself to fail again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> avatar of the eye but it's just me pasting eye emojis into my replies to your comments 👀
> 
> you were all so lovely about last week's chapter, I just wanted to say thank you again for all your lovely comments! I'm glad you enjoyed it <3


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